Emily Withnall Journalist Profile

Articles

Parenting at the End of Empire: Reflections on Homelessness in Santa Fe

6 days ago | sourcenm.com | Emily Withnall |Julia Goldberg

In traffic on St. Francis the other day, we passed a person panhandling on the median and my daughter asked, “Don’t you feel so guilty?” I said, “yes” and also, “I so rarely carry cash”— a kind of excuse that, as I said it, felt insulting and weak — especially given the values I’ve raised both my kids with. My oldest, for example, gives cash frequently and once ran into REI to buy gloves for a man shivering on a bench during a particularly cold winter day.
Parenting at the End of Empire: Reflections on Homelessness in Santa Fe

6 days ago | newsfromthestates.com | Emily Withnall

In traffic on St. Francis the other day, we passed a person panhandling on the median and my daughter asked, “Don’t you feel so guilty?” I said, “yes” and also, “I so rarely carry cash”— a kind of excuse that, as I said it, felt insulting and weak — especially given the values I’ve raised both my kids with. My oldest, for example, gives cash frequently and once ran into REI to buy gloves for a man shivering on a bench during a particularly cold winter day.
Parenting at the End of Empire: Reflections on Homelessness in Santa Fe

6 days ago | yahoo.com | Emily Withnall

Remnants of a camp near a bridge in midtown Santa Fe (Kaveh Mowahed/KUNM)In traffic on St. Francis the other day, we passed a person panhandling on the median and my daughter asked, “Don’t you feel so guilty?” I said, “yes” and also, “I so rarely carry cash”— a kind of excuse that, as I said it, felt insulting and weak — especially given the values I’ve raised both my kids with.
Emily Withnall, Author at Source New Mexico

1 week ago | sourcenm.com | Emily Withnall

Emily Withnall is a writer and editor living in Santa Fe. Her hometown of Las Vegas, NM, is the subject of many of her essays and articles. Read more at: https://www.emilywithnall.com
A collection of essays captures the wonders, wisdom of water in the West

Jan 2, 2025 | santafenewmexican.com | Emily Withnall

Laura Paskus has been visiting the same section of the Rio Grande for 15 years. She has a loop she likes to walk or run where she observes the river’s water levels and takes in the water’s smell from season to season. She watches for the non-human creatures that make their homes nearby, noticing the movement of coyotes, identifying birds in the flyway, and spotting badger dens. For Paskus, her walks along the Rio Grande have become an intentional practice.
The aftermath of the Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon Fires

Nov 30, 2024 | hcn.org | Emily Withnall

In a Santa Fe Walmart, through aisles flooded by fluorescent light, I hunt down 5-gallon plastic jugs, finally finding them, illogically, halfway across the store from the water-filling station. I shove my shopping cart with the sticky wheel alongside the filling station, where water trickles from a jammed spigot so slowly it takes 30 minutes to fill eight jugs. Chilled and agitated by the store’s icy air conditioning, I wonder if there might be a better way.
A School Budgeting Project Made My Daughter Not Want Kids. Here's Why I Don’t Blame Her.

Nov 16, 2024 | thepremierdaily.com | Emily Withnall

At the end of her freshman year, my 15-year-old daughter, Talia, came to me and said, “Mama, I don’t know how you did it.”She proceeded to tell me about one of her ninth grade classes, where she’s learning about budgeting. All of the students in her class were assigned a job and salary, and they were also randomly assigned additional factors like kids/no kids, student loans/no student loans, etc.
Building Queer Community

Jun 25, 2024 | sfreporter.com | Emily Withnall

In their first feature film from 2014, Alexandria “Jo” Bombach (they/she) follows four Afghan photojournalists in Kabul as they take great personal risks to document life in their country in the immediate aftermath of Taliban rule. Frame By Frame offers perspective about what it means to live in a place where telling the truth comes at such a high cost.
Adaptation and Interiority

May 14, 2024 | sfreporter.com | Emily Withnall

The inscription of Tommy Orange’s new novel Wandering Stars reads: “For anyone surviving and not surviving this thing called and not called addiction.” For Orange’s fictional Bear Shield family, who first appeared in his debut Pulitzer Prize-nominated 2018 novel There There, pain comes from the very real circumstances of generational trauma; of surviving genocide; Native American boarding schools; dislocation and relocation; the loss of tribal customs and family memories; and contemporary...
Grassroots New Mexico organizations collaborate on environmental solutions

Apr 19, 2024 | lasvegasoptic.com | Emily Withnall

On April 6, the second anniversary of the Hermit’s Peak Fire, 68 community organizers from San Miguel and Mora Counties, Albuquerque, and beyond, gathered on the United World College campus to collaborate and share resources for building climate resilience.