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

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

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

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell

How Mrs. Dalloway Began

Slipping into Virginia Woolf’s sentences
Edmund de Waal

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

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 stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram

Making Contact

Encounters with readers
Annie Dillard
July 1, 1988

A. Philip Randolph

Remembering the civil rights leader and my friend of over four decades
Bayard Rustin
April 1, 1987

Retrospect: Poetry in Review

Penelope Laurans
December 1, 1985

A Memoir of George Eliot

Soph’ia V. Kovalevskaia,
translated by Miriam Haskell Berlin
July 1, 1984

The Thought of Movies

Stanley Cavell
January 1, 1983

Byron and Mr. Briggs

With an introduction by Edward A. Hungerford
Virginia Woolf
March 1, 1979