Essays

Essays

The Unfolding of Time in Paint

My encounters with Joan Mitchell's panels
Rachel Cohen
Sepia toned photograph showing painter Joan Mitchell behind a canvas in her studio
Memoir

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

I worked for the novelist in her final months. I thought she wanted to kill me.
Elena Gosalvez Blanco
A Closer Read

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell
Essays

How Mrs. Dalloway Began

Slipping into Virginia Woolf’s sentences
Edmund de Waal
Essays

When Does a Divorce Begin?

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

Browse

Essays

Jean Valentine at her desk
Essays

And Finally I'll Say Goodbye

Remembering my mother, Jean Valentine
Rebecca Chace
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
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
The author with her sister in childhood.
Essays

There I Almost Am

On envy and twinship
Jean Garnett
May 19, 2021
people walking in front of a building, black and whtie photo
Essays

We Have a Body

The deaths of patients—and colleagues
Suzanne Koven
May 19, 2021
Adam Zagajewski. Courtesy Donostia Kultura
Tribute

Adam Zagajewski

Remembering a poet of the human soul
Ilya Kaminsky
May 6, 2021
A woman at the beach with a watermelon
Essays

The Wild, Sublime Body

Learning how to be human
Melissa Febos
March 10, 2021
A version of the California flag with "Twitter" replacing "California" in the banner's text section
Essays

Against Abdicating Power to Big Tech

We can’t rely on Big Tech to reign over online speech
Claire Bond Potter
February 1, 2021