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

A photo of the author's mother and brother in 1974
Essays

Ghosts in My Nursery

Mourning the brother I never knew
Miranda Featherstone
January 1, 2020
A blurred photo of lights
Essays

In Centennial

The only ones left alive
Cathy Park Hong
January 1, 2020
An old photo of baseball players
Essays

Loss

When yearning is a pleasure
Sarah Manguso
January 1, 2020
Portrait of the author's mother
Essays

Stereopticon

Twelve ways of looking at my mother
Emily Bernard
January 1, 2020
Portrait of J. D. McClatchy
Essays

Still to Love

For J. D. McClatchy
Langdon Hammer
January 1, 2020
Obscured female form with words
Essays

The Skin You’re In

On living in—and losing—a body
Molly McCully Brown
January 1, 2020
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Listening to the Provinces

A painter’s letters home
Shifra Sharlin
July 1, 2019
An image of an old coin.
Essays

The Virtues and Vices of Speech

On truthfulness, deception, flattery, and more
Giovanni Gioviano Pontano
and
G. W. Pigman III
July 1, 2019
A still image from film of a creature running through the woods who appears to look like Bigfoot.
essays

The Wild Man Within

Peter Matthiessen’s Bigfoot
Jeff Wheelwright
July 1, 2019
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

I Harbor a Stillborn Scribe of the German Tongue in Me

On Germans and Jewishness
Peter Wortsman
May 13, 2019