Nonfiction

Essays

When Does a Divorce Begin?

Most people think of it as failure. For me it was an achievement.
Anahid Nersessian
Books

Vanity Fair’s Heyday

I was once paid six figures to write an article—now what?
Bryan Burrough
A Closer Read

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell
Dan Fox as a child with his nain, or grandmother, in the chicken-filled yard of Siambr Wen, near Llanrwst, North Wales, UK
Essays

What Happened When I Began to Speak Welsh

By learning my family's language, I hoped to join their conversation.
Dan Fox
Sepia toned photograph showing painter Joan Mitchell behind a canvas in her studio
Essays

The Unfolding of Time in Paint

My encounters with Joan Mitchell's panels
Rachel Cohen

Browse

Nonfiction

A Closer Look

Harold Cohen’s AARON

What a prescient work of computer art tells us about AI
Joanne McNeil
May 20, 2024
Tribute

Paul Auster

Why the novelist’s brand of postmodern detective fiction still matters
Ben Libman
May 7, 2024
Essays

Yellow Band

A diagnosis alters a writer's relationship to his work
Steve Edwards
April 29, 2024
Books

The Polycrisis

Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?
Brandy Jensen
April 24, 2024
Objects of Desire

Omega Constellation

Unwinding what I lost
Alexander Chee
April 10, 2024
Essays

When Metaphor Gets Literal

What my mother’s coma taught me about reading poems
Jennifer Grotz
April 3, 2024
Objects of Desire

Antique Medical Slides

Specimens of my past and future self
Leslie Jamison
March 20, 2024
A Closer Look

Candy Darling’s “Newspaper” Centerfold

Encountering the infamous collage of a downtown legend
Lucy Sante
March 18, 2024
The Moment

The Story Wars

The conflict between Red and Blue America is a clash of national mythologies
Richard Slotkin
March 11, 2024
Books

Gender Wars

Two scholars excavate the origins of today’s trans backlash
Paisley Currah
March 4, 2024