Essays

Essays

Night Knowledge

What I learned at the club
Aria Aber
A Closer Look

An Unsettling Civil War Photograph

An image from the Battle of the Wilderness
Rachel Eisendrath
Essays

Quiver and Fixity

What I found returning to Thomas Hardy in midlife
Jhumpa Lahiri
Objects of Desire

A Night’s Sleep

An insomniac’s lifelong pursuit
Vincenzo Latronico
Essays

Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?

A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page
Michel Chaouli
Essays

The Body I Couldn't Abstract

Motherhood reshaped how I see shame, art, and the female body
Megan O’Grady

Browse

Essays

A swirling pattern on green background
Essays

Notes Upon Arrival

A diary of immigration and lost love
Bhanu Kapil
December 1, 2020
Photo of gears and machinery
Essays

The Anti-Extinction Engine

Langston Hughes and my friend, the apocalypse actuary
Anne Boyer
December 1, 2020
Pillars at National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama
Essays

The Hauntologies of Slavery

On a journey across the sea
Jonah Mixon-Webster
December 1, 2020
black and white photo of low and heavy clouds
Essays

The Heavy Air

Capitalism and its affronts to common sense
Anne Boyer
December 1, 2020
The activist Gloria Richardson walking past National Guardsmen during a civil rights march in Cambridge
Essays

Unbothered

The grace of black nonchalance
Namwali Serpell
December 1, 2020
Portrait of Samuel Delany at his desk turning to look over his shoulder
Essays

Why I Write

Getting ready not to be
Samuel R. Delany
December 1, 2020
various sizes of metallic squares with gold borders
Essays

Wildness

Feminism, identity, and the willingness to be defeated
Maria Tumarkin
December 1, 2020
Cracks in ice
Essays

Did I Write a Feel-Good Book?

I survived a terrorist attack. I never expected my story might console others.
Philippe Lançon
and
Steven Rendall
November 23, 2020
Art

Untitled (Event)

Loss, language, counting the nameless, and the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Ann Lauterbach
November 16, 2020
Essays

The Wondrous Banality of Democracy

Counting the votes in one Pennsylvania county during the 2020 presidential election
John Fabian Witt
November 13, 2020