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

From the Archives

Fiction in Review: “Hotel de Dream” by Edmund White

R. Clifton Spargo
July 1, 2008
Essays

The Republic of Letters

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

On Some Functions of Literature

Umberto Eco,
translated by Martin McLaughlin
October 1, 2004
Graphic with loaves of bread and water bottles on a black and orange background. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Essays

Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle

Closely Translating Proust
Lydia Davis
April 1, 2004
From the Archives

The Writer’s Audience

Wallace Stegner
January 1, 2003
From the Archives

Letter to a Young Novelist

Mario Vargas Llosa,
translated by Natasha Wimmer
July 1, 2002
From the Archives

Lincoln and Whitman as Representative Americans

David Bromwich
April 1, 2002
From the Archives

Ibsen the Pioneer

Stella Adler
April 1, 1999
From the Archives

The Mask of Art

Edmund White
April 1, 1999
From the Archives

An Open Book

Edmund White
July 1, 1997