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

From the Archives

From My Cornell Notebooks

Charles Simic
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

The Religion-Making Imagination of Joseph Smith

Harold Bloom
April 1, 1992
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
From the Archives

Short Talks

Anne Carson
July 1, 1991
From the Archives

State and Vine

On Thomas Pynchon's Vineland
Richard Powers
July 1, 1991
From the Archives

"The Waste Land" Revisited

Helen Vendler
December 1, 1990
From the Archives

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

James Merrill
December 1, 1989
From the Archives

Ash-Wednesday

Richard Wilbur
December 1, 1989
From the Archives

The First Eighteen Lines of The Waste Land

Anthony Hecht
December 1, 1989
From the Archives

Love and Sex in the Afro-American Novel

Gloria Naylor
October 1, 1988
From the Archives

A Legend in My Life

My memories of the incomparable Greta Garbo
Vincent Price
July 1, 1988