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

Essays

The Republic of Letters

Edith Wharton at the Start of Her Career
Hermione Lee
April 1, 2007
From the Archives

Charles Simic

Stephen Yenser
April 1, 2002
From the Archives

Secret Maps

Holly Wright's Photographs of Hands
Charles Simic
October 1, 1996
Black and white photo of light coming through windows in the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna with mosaics. Courtesy N.P. Sullo.
Essays

Days of 1952

On the rapture of experiencing art in solitude
James Merrill
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

Fiction in Review

Marilynne Robinson
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

From My Cornell Notebooks

Charles Simic
April 1, 1992
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
From the Archives

Short Talks

Anne Carson
July 1, 1991
From the Archives

"The Waste Land" Revisited

Helen Vendler
December 1, 1990
From the Archives

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

James Merrill
December 1, 1989
From the Archives

Ash-Wednesday

Richard Wilbur
December 1, 1989