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 stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Cremation Society of Kentucky

A life in burned flesh
Raymond Abbott
April 8, 2019
A portrait by Picasso of Gertrude Stein.
Essays

“Sitting at the Table” with Stein and Ashbery

“An Occasion” for Thin[g]king
Karin Roffman
April 1, 2019
Louie Bellson lighting Pearl Bailey's cigarette
Essays

Cultural Differences

How fictional portrayals of intermarriage haven't quite caught up
Jennifer Acker
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Music in the Second Person

Listening to Opus 110
Mark Mazullo
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Myth and Anarchy

Matthew Spellberg
April 1, 2019
A photograph of Ann Petry.
Essays

Nothing New Under the Sun

Ann Petry’s The Street and The Narrows
Emily Bernard
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

The Hall-Mills Murder Trial, 1926

A consideration of death
Harold Schechter
April 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

“The Lonely Hearts Killer,” 1957-1958

Notes on a killing
Harold Schechter
March 18, 2019
Northern lights in blue and red on black sky
Essays

How After the Quake You Returned to What Was Lost

A brief moment
Éireann Lorsung
March 11, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

The “American Tragedy” Murder, 1906

Notes on a killing
Harold Schechter
March 4, 2019