With the arrival of June, The Wise Owl spreads its wings once more—ready to take you on a journey across words, images, and ideas that defy borders and time.

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This month, we are thrilled to spotlight Jacqueline Jones, whose remarkable work No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era (2023) was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize. Alongside this, we bring you a captivating exchange with Bharati Shah, the celebrated Cubist whose bold lines and layered abstractions offer a singular lens on contemporary art.

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Our Talking Books segment delves into cinema and geopolitics with Meenakshi Bharat, who discusses her incisive book Hindi Cinema and Pakistan: Screening the Idea and Reality—a timely exploration of how film mediates complex national narratives. In the creative sections, our global contributors bring forth a tapestry of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that both challenges and comforts. These are voices that carry wisdom, whimsy, and everything in between.

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The Review pages turn their focus on The Patchwork Quilt, a tender and resonant collection of poetry, while our film review of Adolescence offers a nuanced reading of youth caught between becoming and being.

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Our Wise Owl Picks for June serve up literary nourishment in many forms: The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore, and Random Circles of Belief by Nishi Chawla. Each of these texts presents a unique invitation into worlds strange, stirring, and thought-provoking.

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In Visual Arts, we turn our gaze to Los Angeles, where the 23rd Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) 2025 unfurled a stunning showcase of films from South Asian creators and diaspora voices. We also speak with Noopur Sinha, Festival Producer at IFFLA, who reflects on the evolving tapestry of global storytelling.

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Our final feature pays homage to Fumika Tanaka, a traditional Japanese artist whose meditative practice anchors us in the grace of legacy, craft, and quiet power.

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Here is some exciting news—we are now accepting nominations for The Wise Owl Literary Awards 2026. Full details, including eligibility criteria and jury profiles, are available on our Awards Page. The submission window closes on August 30, 2025—we look forward to discovering new brilliance!

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​We hope this issue offers moments of pause, sparks of recognition, and the deep delight that art and literature uniquely provide.