We’re excited and honored to support the writers contributing to Issue 18 of The Drift! As a magazine of culture, literature, and politics, The Drift aims to introduce new work and new ideas by young writers who haven’t yet been absorbed into the media hivemind and don’t feel hemmed in by the boundaries of the existing discourse.
Read the issue digitally or Purchase a physical copy
FRONT LINES
The Last Days of the Danube Institute | A Report from Postliberal Budapest
Brian Goodman writes about literature, dissent, and the unexpected lives of political ideas. He is the author of The Nonconformists: American and Czech Writers Across the Iron Curtain, winner of the Pamela Jensen Award from the American Political Science Association. He teaches at Arizona State University and was recently a Budapest Open Society Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University.
Everything in Moderation | Tech Fiction’s Discontents
Lora Kelley is a writer and tech journalist in Brooklyn.
HOME FRONT
Save Yourself | Secular Celibacy Gets Trendy
Saliha Bayrak is a writer, reporter, and arts educator based in New York. Her writing appears in publications like The Nation, Texas Monthly, Acacia Magazine, and more, covering topics such as discriminatory policing, international activism, and religious identity. She is currently the Research Editor at The Drift. Saliha is a proud state school graduate who grew up between Western Massachusetts and Turkey.
Socialists in Office | NYC-DSA Is Put to the Test
Piper French writes about politics, migration, and the criminal legal system. Her work can be found at Bolts and in New York magazine, The New York Review of Books, Mother Jones, Lux, and elsewhere.
Broken Records | Hollywood’s Music Biopic Formula
Hanson O’Haver is a writer living in New York. He is currently working on his first novel.
FICTION
The Visitor
Lily Felsenthal lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her writing is featured or forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Drift, Gulf Coast, BOMB, and elsewhere, and has been supported by residencies from Yaddo, The Bergman Estate, and Monson Arts as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and others. She’s at work on a short story collection and a novel.
Unlike Things
Henri Lipton’s writing has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Paris Review, and the Columbia Journal. He is in training to become a psychotherapist and working on a novel about Havana Syndrome.
Abracadabra
Chidima Anekwe is a Nigerian-American writer based in New York. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2026 American Literary Review Awards finalist, and winner of the 2025 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction. She has received support from Cave Canem, Fine Arts Work Center, Periplus, Tucson Festival of Books, and Dar Meso Residency. Her writing can be found in or is forthcoming from The Drift, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She edits fiction for Decolonial Passage and serves as the 2026-2027 Words Without Borders Education Fellow. She is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Columbia University, where she is currently at work on a novel. More info at chidimaanekwe.com.
Pacific
Ismail Ibrahim is a writer whose work has appeared in Triple Canopy, Bidoun, n+1, Harper’s, the Drift, and Acacia. He writes fiction and essays about filth and God and still believes, despite everything, in the possibility of another world.
POETRY
The Only Visit
Ben Purkert’s work pops up in The New Yorker, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Wall Street Journal, Poetry, and he’s been featured by NPR, Esquire, and The Boston Globe. His debut novel, The Men Can’t Be Saved, was named one of Vanity Fair’s Top 20 Books of 2023. He’s also the author of the poetry collection For the Love of Endings. The former editor of Guernica’s Back Draft series, he teaches in the MFA programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Warren Wilson.
Year of the No-Talk Rule
Sam Bailey is from central Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review, Best New Poets, The Missouri Review, Colorado Review, West Branch, Image, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. He is a PhD candidate at Harvard studying devotional Christian poetics, Associate Editor of Peripheries, and Coeditor-in-Chief of Mark: A Journal of Christian Poets.
Hermione Granger
Lev Xue lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn with his dog Poopy Xue. Last summer he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with his mother. Since then he’s been working on writing his first two books.
“I wanted to like sports radio”
grace (ge) gilbert is the author of Holly (YesYes Books, 2026).
Self-Evaluation
Rosanna Young Oh is the author of The Corrected Version and was recently named the winner of BOMB Magazine’s 2026 Poetry Contest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford Poetry, The Yale Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
How to Build a Chair
Steve Roberts is a poet and writer from East Dallas. He holds a BA from the College of Santa Fe and an MFA from the New School, both for Creative Writing. He writes poetry, fiction, reviews and interviews for a number of magazines and websites including Rainbow Rodeo and cul de sac of blood. He is currently shopping his poetry manuscript “Now That I Have Everything” and a currently untitled novel. He works as a representative for a teacher’s union and lives in East Dallas with his spouse, newborn daughter and two cats.