Alizeh Kohari

Life Stories Editor, Psyche

Alizeh Kohari is a writer, editor and reporter who divides her time between Pakistan and the United States. She most recently worked at Global Press, training reporters across the world, from Mexico to Mongolia. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, New York Review of Books, Wired and others.

Edited by Alizeh Kohari

Photo of three people smiling indoors, seated with arms around each other, with decorative items in the background.

Thicker than blood

When polio left me unable to walk, my parents put me in a disability centre. There, I met Mommy

Sauda Bashir, as told to Kiprop Kimutai

A person relaxing on an inflatable ring in a river surrounded by trees on a sunny day.

Muscle memory

How transitioning upended my own gendered understanding of strength, desirability, and power

by Mieke de Vries

Three worn teddy bears, one beige, one blue and a brown one that has had its nose rubbed off.
PLAY

The Teds

Like characters outgrowing their creator, our teddy bears developed lives of their own

by Sam Firman

Vintage photo of a man with a moustache holding a baby wearing a red pointed cap and a young child

The long goodbye

Losing my father to forgetting and my brother to silence, I grieve the living in two different ways

by Steph Auteri

Rikers Island sign on a building with a speedboat on the river in the foreground.

Loafing around at Rikers

What making – and breaking – bread in jail taught me about work and friendship

by J V

Abstract photo with a pink hue showing a blurred face and earphones.
OCD

The unravelling

I’d lived through two eras: pre and post OCD diagnosis. Nothing prepared me for what the third era held

by Lux Alptraum

A road below a railway line with a brick wall and red garage doors, graffiti that reads ‘MICK DARNALDS NO PARKING’ behind a table with a can of coke on it and four red chairs.

A psalm for lost spaces

You have to sit down somewhere, unhurried and unbothered, to really hear yourself. But where?

by Atar Hadari

Photo of a child in winter clothing standing next to a cat outdoors on a sunny day, with text from a book visible.

My cousin Anna

As a Korean adoptee, I’d never expected to meet a blood relative. Then a 23andMe email landed in my inbox

by Andrew Lee