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 photograph of a train station in Russia at night.
Journals

A Journey Across Siberia

Penetrating the Soviet Union in 1967
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
July 1, 2015
From the Archives

Alice Munro

The short-story writer's prismatic final collection
Jane Mendelsohn
April 1, 2014
From the Archives

Genet’s “Prisoner of Love”: The Evolution of a Muslim Saint

Edmund White
January 1, 2012
Essay

My Old Printer

Anne Fadiman
March 12, 2011
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
From the Archives

Letters to Arthur Gold, Robert Fizdale, and James Merrill

Edited with a note by Langdon Hammer
Elizabeth Bishop
April 1, 2003
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