Nonfiction

Memoir

Writing

Unpublished journal entries
Annie Ernaux
Objects of Desire

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes
Sarah Thankam Mathews
The Moment

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial
Samuel Moyn
Essays

The End of Books

What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university's library
Sheila Liming
Ideas

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years
Kathryn Lofton
Essays

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels
Namwali Serpell

Browse

Nonfiction

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
A stack of books
The Moment

On Rereading

Remaking the world
Victor Brombert
May 19, 2021
An image from Ingmar Bergman's Persona
Essays

My Year of Stalking Rachel

The quest to see without being seen
Becca Rothfeld
May 19, 2021
The Smiths vinyl among records on a shelf
Essays

The Wrong Daddy

Morrissey and the cult of the wounded white male
Jeremy Atherton Lin
May 19, 2021