To survey this year’s list of TYR’s most-read prose is to be reminded of what an eventful year it was. These ten essays, reviews, and interviews roam widely across the cultural and political landscape, shedding new light on crucial subjects that will continue to preoccupy us in 2025 and beyond. Christina Sharpe interrogates the task of the writer amid unbearable violence in Gaza, Buffalo, and Brazil; Paisley Currah diagnoses the rise of anti-trans policies in the U.S. and globally; and Brandy Jensen defends the utopian impulses underlying current debates about nonmonogamy. Essays by Lydia Davis, Tan Tuck Ming, and Steve Edwards explore the challenges and compensations of contemporary life on a more personal register, though no less urgently. And Chris Ware, Teju Cole, and Rachel Cusk (in conversation with Merve Emre) attest to art’s unique role in giving form to that life. In her meditation on the practice of literary criticism, Christine Smallwood writes, “For me, writing a review is a way of getting closer to an object, taking it apart to understand how it works.” In these pieces, our contributors get close to not only poems and novels but also “objects” as varied as legislation, neurological phenomena, and the night’s enveloping darkness. We hope they help you understand how it all works.
—the editors
“The Polycrisis” by Brandy Jensen
Brandy Jensen reviews a spate of recent books and articles on polyamory, illuminating the wider terrain of love and sexual ethics today.
“Writing in Pictures” by Chris Ware
Famed cartoonist Chris Ware considers the great illustrator Richard Scarry’s books and reflects on the ways in which they guide the lives of children.
“The Shapes of Grief” by Christina Sharpe
Through a series of short vignettes that incorporate news analysis, cultural artifacts, personal memoir, history, and reportage, Christina Sharpe offers a damning portrait of suffering as the fighting rages on between Israel and Palestine.
An Interview with Rachel Cusk by Merve Emre
Novelist Rachel Cusk discusses morality, the female voice, and her new book, Second Place, with writer Merve Emre.
“A Reviewer’s Life” by Christine Smallwood
Writer Christine Smallwood articulates the material constraints of writing criticism today.
“A Head Is a Territory of Light” by Tan Tuck Ming
“There are days I cannot seem to enter, when I cannot shake the sense that I am on the border of myself,” writes Tan Tuck Ming in an essay that reaches for answers about his chronic migraines, tapping into both his family history and the natural phenomenon of phototropism.
“Gender Wars” by Paisley Currah
Paisley Currah examines the roots of today’s anti-trans movement.
“Absolute Darkness” by Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis plumbs the depths and appeal of darkness in our age of omnipresent artificial light.
“Yellow Band” by Steve Edwards
Steve Edwards shares how his autism diagnosis altered his relationship to his work.
“Louise Glück’s Late Style” by Teju Cole
When the poet Louise Glück died, she left behind a monumental body of work. Writer and artist Teju Cole elucidates her final, fabular books.