This essay is written by MAYDAY magazine’s Critic in Residence My best friend Hannah and I spent one of the nights of our recent girls’ trip to Stockholm listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast episode about Olivia Nuzzi’s 2025 memoir American Canto, in which podcast hosts Michael Hobbs and Peter Shamshiri lament that Nuzzi does not reveal […]
McKenzie Watson-Fore
MCKENZIE WATSON-FORE is a writer, artist, and critic currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University and a BA in Biblical Studies from Gordon College. She serves as the executive editor of sneaker wave magazine, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Full Stop, Christian Century, the Offing, CALYX, and elsewhere. When she's not writing, she dances Argentine tango, knits baby cardigans, and watercolors her feelings. McKenzie can be found at MWatsonFore.com.
Innocence Myths
Christian Nationalism and the Dubious Possibility of Change
by McKenzie Watson-Fore
This essay is written by MAYDAY magazine’s Critic in Residence For the previous three pieces in this critical residency, I’ve focused on evangelicalism, the intersections of Christian and mainstream literature, and the collision of pop culture and evangelical subculture. For my fourth piece, I want to turn the lens toward an expression of evangelicalism more […]
Please Don’t Make Fun of God
by McKenzie Watson-Fore
This essay is written by MAYDAY magazine’s Critic in Residence This past summer, my partner Michael and I attended the wedding of two of our friends. One of them grew up in a Y2K prepper cult in Eastern Oregon. Her now-wife is a Dutch gynecologist. The four of us will often laugh about the mirrored […]
The Silo of Spirituality
by McKenzie Watson-Fore
Christ icon in the Chapel of St. Augustine near Sveti Duh na Ostrem vrhu. Photo by Clemens Stockner (via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0) This essay is written by MAYDAY magazine’s Critic in Residence for Spring and Summer 2025. When you grow up religious, you grow up steeped in media the likes of which secular folks […]
