In beautifully written and powerfully thought prose, A World Out of Reach offers a crucial record of the cataclysmic spring of 2020—a record for us to share with one another, and for posterity, in the voices of writers of disparate backgrounds.

When the coronavirus outbreak came to the West, The Yale Review began asking writers to think out loud on the page about the unfolding international crisis, to capture the immediacy of a swiftly changing global pandemic. This crisis has mostly been told through the voices of journalists, scientists, and politicians, but in this collection, poets, essayists, scholars, and health care workers provide a more intimate and diverse account. Ranging from high matters of policy to ancient history to personal stories of how individuals were surviving their days, this vivid compilation presents a first draft of one of most tumultuous periods in modern history.
Contributors:
Katie Kitamura

Laura Kolbe

Nitin Ahuja

Natasha Randall

Rena Xu

Alicia Christoff

Miranda Featherstone

Maya C. Popa

Major Jackson

John Witt

Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz

Joan Naviyuk Kane

Emmeline Clein

Nell Freudenberger

Briallen Hopper

Brandon Shimoda

Ben Purkert

Yusef Komunyakaa

Laren McClung

Eric O'Keefe-Krebs

Sean Lynch

Millicent Marcus

Meghana Mysore

Rachel Jamison Webster

Emily Ziff Griffin

Rowan Ricardo Philips

Kathryn Lofton

Monica Ferrell

Russell Morse

Randi Hutter Epstein

Noreen Khawaja

Victoria Chang

Joyelle McSweeney

Khameer Kidia

Emily Greenwood

Elisa Gabbert

Emily Bernard

Hafizah Geter

Emily Gogolak

Roger Reeves