Nonfiction

Essays

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe
Books

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
Chris Ware
Books

Is Blasphemy Illiberal?

Salman Rushdie’s thoroughly modern controversies
Len Gutkin
Art

How Mike Kelley Became Himself

The artist’s search for subcultural America
Jonathan Griffin
Objects of Desire

Richard Pryor

A fiction
Hilton Als
Essays

The Path to Playwright

Discovering my literary hero in an unlikely place
Sonya Kelly

Browse

Nonfiction

Black and white portrait of Machado de Assis
Books

Machado de Assis’s Afterlives

The Brazilian novelist’s overlooked politics
Ratik Asokan
June 28, 2021
Blue and yellow illustration with two faces on either side of a hanging lamp
Books

No-No Man

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s nihilist masterpiece
Roy Scranton
June 28, 2021
Graphic with book pages and blue designs of windows and cats
Essays

The Heart of Fiction

Storytelling, experience, and truth
Hernan Diaz
June 28, 2021
Essays

The Subject of Pain

On Louise Bourgeois
Madhu H. Kaza
June 28, 2021
Interior view of library.
Essays

What Space is For

The forking paths of memory and return
Mairead Small Staid
June 28, 2021
Person moves out of view in a dark area.
Essays

Picturing Catastrophe

The visual politics of racial reckoning
Rizvana Bradley
May 25, 2021
Jean Valentine at her desk
Essays

And Finally I'll Say Goodbye

Remembering my mother, Jean Valentine
Rebecca Chace
May 19, 2021
New York Times Cover reading "US Deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss
Books

Incalculable Loss

How writing can help make sense of grief
Christopher Spaide
May 19, 2021
Corgi jumping from floating dock into water after a tennis ball with great abandon
Criticism

It Me

The trouble with memes
Marta Figlerowicz
May 19, 2021
James Merrill in a kitchen
Letters

Merrill's Last Letters

Writing to the end
James Merrill
May 19, 2021