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 pair of weathered wood doors with peeling orange paint
Objects of Desire

Doorknobs

I never installed them. What doors could they have opened?
Katie Kitamura
June 9, 2025
Objects of Desire

Salomé

I gave my daughter the name my mother wanted—but who was her namesake?
Colombe Schneck
June 9, 2025
Abstract photo of bent-over nude
A Closer Read

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell
June 9, 2025
A black-and-white photo of Patricia Highsmith smoking at her kitchen table in Tegna, Switzerland
Memoir

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

I worked for the novelist in her final months. I thought she wanted to kill me.
Elena Gosalvez Blanco
June 9, 2025
A portrait of Edmund White wearing a navy-blue sweater and standing on a red-staired NYC stoop with a wrought-iron railing
Tribute

Edmund White

My friend in literature, laughter, and grief
Yiyun Li
June 6, 2025
Essays

The Ragpicker's Way

Among scraps and ruins, an artist gathers a different kind of archive
Edmund de Waal
May 13, 2025
Objects of Desire

Rubber Bands

How can we extend love?
Catherine Barnett
May 6, 2025
The Moment

The Post-Francis Church

Catholicism has long wrestled with tradition and modernity. Will the late pope’s legacy offer a way forward?
Jack Hanson
April 29, 2025
Black and white photograph of lecture hall desks in a semi-circle
The Moment

A View from Here

Trump's attacks on higher education and the work of a little magazine
Meghan O’Rourke
April 23, 2025
Essays

A Unified Theory of the Handbag

Was an accessory the secret to evolution?
Audrey Wollen
March 11, 2025