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
The Body I Couldn't Abstract
Motherhood reshaped how I see shame, art, and the female body
Megan O’Grady
Browse
Essays
Seven Theses on the Open-Closed Theaters
The pandemic has shuttered theaters, but the need for communal experience has never been more vital
Feisal G. Mohamed
October 21, 2020
![photograph of metal match box with "a [image of a match] for you at any time" printed on the front](https://d181q449nqu6en.cloudfront.net/content/craft/articles/_article/chsdm-edf76e1c89982-000001_2_1_0_0_0.jpg)
My Silent Childhood
I didn’t know my name until I went to kindergarten. Then I became a writer.
Maureen Sun
September 1, 2020
Soup Can; or, On Hospitality
Anything can become a weapon in America, especially against those who dare to cross the color line
Wendy S. Walters
September 1, 2020
We Miss Each Other, But Do We Even Know Each Other?
After a long-ago theater closure, a female playwright complicated what it means to be intimate with another body
Katherine Mannheimer
July 23, 2020
The Crisis of Asylum at Trump’s Border Wall
A symbol is being built for the sake of voters who have never been to the borderlands
Emily Gogolak
July 2, 2020