Essays

Essays

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe
The Moment

Palestinian Solidarity, Then and Now

The power of encampment as a form of protest
Feisal G. Mohamed
Essays

Louise Glück’s Late Style

The fabular turn in the poet’s last three books
Teju Cole
Essays

Jean Stein’s Rolodex

The legendary editor’s social genius
Benjamin Anastas
Essays

The Path to Playwright

Discovering my literary hero in an unlikely place
Sonya Kelly
Essays

The Frictions of Interracial Love

How one fundamental difference can color every aspect of marriage
Anne Anlin Cheng

Browse

Essays

Graphic with hands holding ballet slippers, weighing scales, and cigarettes.
Essays

Battle Scene

Ballet, trauma, and rebirth
Ian Spencer Bell
October 18, 2021
Graphic with a hamster atop one house and a gravestone atop another.
Essays

A Small Death in the Family

What losing our pet taught me about a much greater, deeper love
Craig Morgan Teicher
October 12, 2021
Installation of found hand mirrors arranged in an oval on a wall.
Essays

Race Off

The fantasy of race transformation
Namwali Serpell
September 27, 2021
Todd Gitlin speaks with with I.F. Stone at a demonstration against nuclear weapons, Washington D.C., 1962.
Essays

In Pursuit of Clancy Sigal

A writer’s radical life
Todd Gitlin
September 20, 2021
Collage with images from social media
Essays

Now Is Pretty Creepy

What Miranda July's performance art reveals about our technologically mediated lives
Min Li Chan
September 20, 2021
Graphic with alternating black and purple, and hands opening to a white space
The Moment

Strangers in Our Own Homes

The pandemic’s xenophobic discourse
Divya Victor
September 20, 2021
Two cartoon characters superimposed onto painting of a storm.
Essays

The Brink of Destruction

Revisiting John Ashbery’s “Soonest Mended”
Edward Hirsch
September 20, 2021
Graphic with two bathtubs on pedestals and a leaf dropping from the faucets
Essays

Suicide in Fiction, Reconsidered

Why we need stories about living after a suicide attempt
Morgan Thomas
September 7, 2021
Riot
Essays

In the Riot Grrrl Archive

Punk and the limits of individualism
Rachel Greenwald Smith
July 19, 2021
Lighthouse stairs
Essays

Lullaby

On motherhood and the pain of holding
Chloe Garcia Roberts
July 12, 2021