Alana Pockros

New York

Writer and Editor at Freelance

Engagement Editor and Writer at The Nation

engagement, editing @thenation + @clereviewbooks; critic around town

Articles

Almodóvar’s Women

2 months ago | thepointmag.com | Alana Pockros

If you are a leading woman in a Pedro Almodóvar film, your life will not be frictionless. You will have a terminal illness. Or if you don’t have one, you will be grieving the one that someone very close to you has. You will be a single mother or mother-to-be. You will have very intimate female friendships, but you won’t always be faithful, or act selflessly. You will work a creative career, such as writing or acting or photographing products for advertisements.
A Strange Trip Through the Violence of the Trump Era

Oct 22, 2024 | newrepublic.com | Alana Pockros

Emily Witt’s favorite drug is acid—specifically between 75and 100 micrograms two or three hours before leaving the house. It never causesa hangover, it lasts all night, and its effects can be amplified or dulled downwith other drugs. On the right amount of acid, Witt feels happy to be aroundothers, but not so delirious that she might mistake someone she doesn’t knowfor a friend.
A Strange Trip Through the Violence of the Trump Era

Oct 22, 2024 | yahoo.com | Alana Pockros

Emily Witt’s favorite drug is acid—specifically between 75 and 100 micrograms two or three hours before leaving the house. It never causes a hangover, it lasts all night, and its effects can be amplified or dulled down with other drugs. On the right amount of acid, Witt feels happy to be around others, but not so delirious that she might mistake someone she doesn’t know for a friend.
Sophia Giovannitti: Be the Cowboy

Sep 6, 2024 | artreview.com | Alana Pockros

The artist methodically catalogues how her faith – in humanity and in God – unravelled after her stint at a tech companySophia Giovannitti once worked at a tech company where her boss found her body more valuable than her brain. In fact, what he wanted more than her intellectual labour was her sexual labour.
The Miracle of America | Walter Kirn

Jul 20, 2024 | countyhighway.com | Walter Kirn |Matt Farwell |Alana Pockros

Report Bittersweet Nostalgia Meets Post-Apocalyptic Dread in Polson, ontana Yards and yards of battered old junk Walter Kirn The Miracle of America Museum in Polson, Montana is a maze of hallways, niches, nooks, barns, garages, sheds, and open yards packed with an array of objects, from lunch boxes to fighter jets.
The Paris Review - The Host - The Paris Review

Jul 2, 2024 | theparisreview.org | Alana Pockros

By Alana Pockros July 2, 2024 I took the day off work to cook. Dad wore my apron and made the charoset and complained about how long it took to cut that many apples. Mom told me the soup tasted like nothing and made me go to Key Food to buy Better Than Bouillon. They were visiting New York to see my new apartment for the first time.
The Phone, the Girl, the Computer

Jun 26, 2024 | nyra.nyc | Alana Pockros

The algorithm has our attention. It befuddles and bewilders, surprises and preoccupies, sucking us in like a vacuum, and spitting us out like a blowhole. Dayna Tortorici understood and articulated this better than many of us ever could in her hugely popular essay “My Instagram,” which captured and perpetuated our frenetic zeal for the algorithm and our discussion of it.
Lauren Oyler and the Critic in the Internet Age

Apr 9, 2024 | thenation.com | Alana Pockros

Culture / Books & the Arts / Lauren Oyler and literary criticism in the age of the Internet. In No Judgment, the novelist and critic explores the perilous activity of literary criticism in the era of social media. Ad PolicyThis article appears in the April 2024 issue. Like many great literary critics before her, Lauren Oyler wrote a novel as her first book.
Nona Faustine Never Leaves the Frame

Mar 7, 2024 | nytimes.com | Alana Pockros

In striking self-portraits at the Brooklyn Museum, the artist revisits locations with histories of enslavement and reimagines the body as a site of power. It makes perfect sense that Nona Faustine's introduction to professional photography was through photojournalism. While her photographs are always premeditated and posed, their primary intent is to calcify a particular moment in time to ensure that she - and we - never forget it.
Quarter in Review: Three Horse Girls, Two Horses, One “Vol. 01” — Cleveland Review of Books

Dec 21, 2023 | clereviewofbooks.com | Alana Pockros

In 2001, a woman named Sarah Dodd developed an Australian-Canadian TV series called The Saddle Club, based on 144 children’s books of the same name by a writer named Bonnie Bryant. The series featured three teenage girls: Carole Hanson, Stevie Lake, and Lisa Atwood—and then their horses. Think The Clique, but more wholesome, more winsome, and with giant animals capable of jumping over hedges and galloping home in an emergency. The Saddle Club followed “the adventures of three girls . . .