Catapult | gabriellebellot

Gabrielle Bellot

Gabrielle Bellot is a staff writer for Literary Hub and the Head Instructor at Catapult. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Cut, Gay Magazine, Tin House, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, them, and many other places. Her essays have been anthologized in Indelible in the Hippocampus (2019), Can We All Be Feminists? (2018), and elsewhere. She holds both an MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She lives in Queens.

Cover Photo: cover comic illustration of Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, grinning with one fist extended in the air

Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, and Me

I’m still drawn to stories about teenage girls’ lives, real or fantastical, and a part of it is trying to glimpse a world I never fully got to walk in.

Gabrielle Bellot

Feb 16, 2021

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: the cast of the show 'Freaks and Geeks' in front of a row of orange lockers

Rewatching ‘Freaks and Geeks’ in a Polarized America

For all the pain, there is also beauty in the margins those outside of them may never understand.

Gabrielle Bellot

Jan 19, 2021

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: photograph of a scuba-diver ascending in a blue-lit column between two massive black shapes that might be underwater rocks

The Year of Breath

I try to feel my lungs expanding and contracting, just to make sure they still are. There is something soothing, like the indigo of a fading day, in that reminder.

Gabrielle Bellot

Oct 15, 2020

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: A Minneapolis mural and memorial honor George Floyd, killed by police on May 25, 2020. The mural is by artists Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, and Greta McLain. Flowers, candles, and signs left by mourners in the foreground.

Living in Dread of the Next Name We’ll Chant

There is hope in the size and power of our protests, hope that our message will truly, finally be heard—but whether it will be understood in the hearts that need it most is a much harder, scarier question.

Gabrielle Bellot

Jun 03, 2020

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: image of a medieval plague doctor walking along a dirt road next to a lake blanketed in mist

Why Do We Read Plague Stories?

They suggest that we can get through adversity, that things could always be worse. And sometimes, the best of these stories are genuinely full of love.

Gabrielle Bellot

Apr 06, 2020

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: photograph of a partial side and corner of an empty wrestling ring in the fading light

The Curious Language of Grief

I don’t think I cried over his death for a long time. I wondered if something was wrong with me. I hadn’t realized that we have to learn how to cry.

Gabrielle Bellot

Mar 11, 2020

Columns | Wander, Woman

Cover Photo: illustration of a woman reading a book amidst lush, larger-than-life green foliage

The Wildness of Maurice Sendak

Just as Sendak inverts a stereotypical association of white with youthful ingenuousness, Max inverts the expectations of many a children’s morality tale, for he is allowed to be wild.

Gabrielle Bellot

Feb 12, 2020

Columns | Wander, Woman