Conjunctions: 57, Kin

Nothing is more familiar, nothing more ineffable than the emotional prism, the blood knot that constitutes family. We can try to leave them, they can disinherit us, but there is no dispelling DNA, no true exile from that which binds us with our kin. In "Conjunctions: 57, Kin," more than two dozen contributors, including Rick Moody, Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem, explore the intricacies and knots of family ties. Essayist Karen Hays offers a meditation on a sledding outing with her children on the day that her son's first pet dies, contemplating everything from Euclidean geometry to the algorithm used in credit card encryption to the "wintry vista" of infinity. Micaela Morrissette weighs in with a Calvinoesque portrait of two siblings whose powers far exceed the everyday. This special issue of "Conjunctions" addresses the labyrinthine nature of kinship through essays, fiction and poetry.