Everyone But Me Wrote This
September 5, 2023
On McKenzie Wark's Love and Money, Sex and Death
Guernica
Lit World
Apostrophe
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Antoine Wilson
October 24, 2022
The novelist discusses airport lounges, post-revision regret, and what it means to save someone’s life.
Interview
Alexander Chee: “Community always has a certain amount of struggle”
October 17, 2022
The 2022 Guernica Benefit honoree on the importance of building literary community
Interview
Olena Rybka: Ukraine’s Literary Identity
August 2, 2022
The editor discusses publishing books in a time of war and working to preserve the Ukrainian language.
Interview
Shuang Xuetao: Writing Rouge Street, a Home for Exiles of Chinese Modernity
June 14, 2022
The New Dongbei Literature writer on “pure fiction,” genre novels, and revolutionary slogans.
Essay
Kate Braverman Is Dead
April 5, 2022
The late writer believed that womanhood should confer outlaw status.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Hala Alyan
January 31, 2022
The novelist discusses the strain of translating herself to others, and explains why she enjoys brainstorming more than editing.
Interview
Ruth Franklin: Shirley Jackson and the Madness of Mid-Century Womanhood
January 24, 2022
Jackson’s biographer on the author’s fragmented female characters — and her critical renaissance
Essay
Recent Memory
December 2, 2021
Lana Bastašić’s Catch the Rabbit and new translated literature from the Balkans grapple with living in aftermath.
Interview
Julia Fine: Ghosts of Rebel Children’s Book Authors
November 17, 2021
The author of The Upstairs House on postpartum depression, hauntings, and the legacy of Margaret Wise Brown.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Rebecca Donner
November 2, 2021
The author discusses her family's connection to the Nazi resistance in Germany and writing through historical gaps.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman
October 19, 2021
Two fiction writers on how collaborating on a novel changed their friendship.
Review
Ordinary People
October 5, 2021
In a book comprised of observations from her daily bus commute, Lauren Elkin considers the line between the everyday and the exceptional.
Interview
Rita Dove: “We aren’t lost”
August 11, 2021
The former US Poet Laureate’s new collection leans into uncertainty, anger, and the limits of the body.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Sterling HolyWhiteMountain
July 23, 2021
The fiction writer discusses Native art, breakup phone calls, and the line between politics and propaganda.
Interview
Rivka Galchen: “What we run away from often determines where and to what we run.”
July 12, 2021
The author discusses witch hunts, self-annihilation, and Back to the Future.
Interview
Anjali Enjeti: Politics and Possibility
June 29, 2021
The author talks about the need for structural change in publishing, and why we should all be archivists of our family histories.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Bianca Stone and Ruth Stone
June 22, 2021
The poet discusses Emily Dickinson, strip clubs, and grieving over the loss of her grandmother.
Interview
AE OSWORTH: “I can, in fact, write 419 pages out of spite.”
June 7, 2021
"I will die on this hill, the hill that says: Everything that happens online is real. Online is reality, as much as meatspace."
Interview
In Touch With the Breath of the World
May 19, 2021
Roland Rugero talks about living the literary life in a country of orality, writing across three languages, and upending the Eurocentrism that still decides which African voices get heard.
Essay
Embracing Butch
May 5, 2021
Reading and rereading Leslie Feinberg’s transformative 1993 novel, Stone Butch Blues.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Clint Smith
May 3, 2021
The writer and poet talks about novelistic nonfiction and why he thinks of his grandparents as monuments.
Interview
S. Kirk Walsh: The Blitz of Grief
April 29, 2021
The author of The Elephant of Belfast talks about grief, trauma, and the craft of writing.
Interview
Elissa Washuta: “Living inside this empire is all that I will ever have.”
April 28, 2021
The essayist on her new book, White Magic, and turning obsession into research.
Interview
Caleb Azumah Nelson: “The confrontation with myself enabled me to find a brief freedom.”
April 23, 2021
The author guides us through the tapestry of Black art, music, cinema, and literature that animates his debut novel, Open Water.
Interview
Gina Frangello: Truth and Consequences
April 19, 2021
The author of the memoir Blow Your House Down talks about secrecy, accountability, and resisting happy endings.
Interview
Te-Ping Chen: “Every story unfolded as a series of surprises in the writing.”
March 23, 2021
The author of Land of Big Numbers talks about interweaving real life with the fantastic to write about today’s China.
Essay
In the Land of Fiction and Fake News
January 15, 2021
A lie is a fiction made up to take away someone else’s power.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Lisa Dillman
January 13, 2021
The translator on selecting her subjects, discovering the work of Andrés Barba, and the dangers of cultural hegemony.
Fiction
The Inland Sea
January 8, 2021
And the phone rang, and it rang, and the woman screamed once more, and I connected to another number, and told her the ambulance service would answer as soon as they could, and it rang twelve times while she screamed and the siren blared above the windows while the rush-hour crowds streamed through Hyde Park.
Interview
Alistair Ian Blyth: Translating Post-Soviet Moldova
January 7, 2021
Iulian Ciocan’s translator on bringing the Moldovan writer to a global audience.
Interview
Barbara Demick: “I want to portray history through the eyes of the people living it.”
December 7, 2020
The journalist talks about how humans respond to crisis, reporting on repressive regimes, and why she wanted to write about Tibet.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Danez Smith
December 3, 2020
The poet on a hard year for books, getting a rise out of an audience, and “Frankensteining” your archives.
Interview
Sejal Shah: “All my life, I have been biking with brakes on.”
November 9, 2020
This Is One Way To Dance is a timely collection about identity—where it comes from, what it means (and doesn’t), and what happens when we lose it.
Interview
Sunisa Manning: Flexibility is Subversive
November 2, 2020
The author of A Good True Thai talks about political imagination, writing about revolt, and liberating her characters.
Interview
Claire Cronin: Blue Light Hauntings
October 28, 2020
Horror writer Claire Cronin discusses her new book, the digital uncanny, and how obsession demands a sideways approach.
Commentary
Nairobi Rising
October 27, 2020
Is Kenyan fiction experiencing a renaissance after decades of authoritarianism?
Interview
Anna Bruno: Can Women Win in Literature?
October 26, 2020
The writer on “likeable” women, loyal dogs, and the luck of “breaking out.”
Interview
Jennifer Hijazi: Climate and the Courts
October 20, 2020
The climate reporter on what a Justice Amy Coney Barrett would mean for the environment.
Interview
Destiny O. Birdsong: Infinite Negotiations
October 12, 2020
“I like the idea that a poem is a dress that can fit the wearer.”
Review
Temporary Paradise
October 7, 2020
Stephanie LaCava’s The Superrationals tells the story of the rich and oblivious.
Interview
Sarah Kasbeer: Dissecting the Damage
October 5, 2020
A new collection of essays considers the weight of patriarchy and the ordinary traumas of being a woman.
Review
Seeking Clarity
September 29, 2020
Emily Temple’s debut novel The Lightness tells the story of a “Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls.”
Interview
Tiffany McDaniel: Spilling Secrets
September 28, 2020
The author of Betty talks about using family as the basis for fiction, and why she’s not smiling in her author photo.
Review
The Music in Her Head
September 22, 2020
David Hajdu’s novel offers a postmodern portrait of a postmodern artist.
Interview
Darin Strauss: Beyond Biography
September 21, 2020
The writer on blending fiction and memoir, and exploring the nature of celebrity.
Interview
Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Everything that Made Us Still Belongs to Us
September 17, 2020
The writer of a poetic trilogy on listening to ancestral voices, Black feminism, and seeing salvation in marine mammals.
Interview
Shruti Swamy: The Intensity of Language
September 4, 2020
The writer on confronting fear on the page, motherhood, and how stories help us make meaning.
Review
On One’s Land
September 3, 2020
Kendra Atleework's memoir Miracle Country embraces a dangerous, and endangered, land.
Review
Objects of Curiosity
September 2, 2020
Elena Ferrante's latest novel, The Lying Life of Adults, is a marvelous blur.
Interview
Angie Thomas: We Have to Get Uncomfortable
August 25, 2020
The bestselling YA author discusses how young people can make change, how grief shapes activism, and what it would mean to defund the police.
Interview
Makenna Goodman: Motherhood and Isolation
August 17, 2020
The debut author of the The Shame discusses book hoarding, life in Vermont, and the weight of the past.
Interview
Diane Cook: “Our humanity is what makes us so particularly wild.”
August 10, 2020
The author reflects on writing the physical world into fiction, what makes someone a “bad mom,” and what a wilderness community has in common with The Office.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
August 3, 2020
The poet on radical revision, our reflections, and photographing poets.
Review
Local Color
July 30, 2020
In a new collection of stories, Matthew Baker offers an uneasy tour of a familiar place.
Review
A Stranger in Town
July 29, 2020
Catherine Lacey's latest novel, Pew, urges us to look beyond appearances.
Interview
Porochista Khakpour: I’ve Become Uninterested in Darkness
July 21, 2020
Porochista Khakpour’s Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity tells a deeply moving—and often startling—story of being brown-skinned in America.
Review
Writing Nearby
July 6, 2020
Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection Minor Feelings presents a fraught and considerate attempt to say what it means to be Asian American today.
Interview
Garth Greenwell: Incredibly Vulnerable Beings
July 2, 2020
"Art is about plunging oneself into the abyss."
Interview
Megha Majumdar: What Will You Surrender?
June 26, 2020
The novelist discusses the politics of silence, questioning your idols, and the accumulation of shame.
Interview
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: DREAMer memoirs have their purpose. But that’s not what I set out to write.
June 10, 2020
The writer on taking control of her narrative, her telepathic connection to Stephen Miller, and the army of mutants.
Interview
Ken Liu: “We get to define the stories we want to be told about us.”
May 28, 2020
Using photos of his text editors, mapmaking software, and 3D-printed prototypes, the writer talks about technology, myth, and telling stories during a pandemic.
Interview
Meredith Talusan: I’m Not Brave
May 27, 2020
The writer and editor on resisting the expectations for minority voices, her French-inflected prose, and the complications that make life worthwhile.
Review
You Shall Also Love the Stranger
May 25, 2020
On John Washington’s The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond
Review
Latitudes of Longing: An Epic of Ghosts and Glaciers
May 19, 2020
A debut novel reminds us that the earth itself is alive, and that even in our isolation we are members of a changing world.
Interview
Stephanie Danler: Empowered by Choice
May 14, 2020
The novelist and memoirist discusses generational trauma, developing compassion for oneself, and feeling empowered by choice.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Miranda Popkey
May 5, 2020
The novelist discusses the shape of a narrative, and the value of retyping.
Commentary
The Worlds We Find Ourselves In: Mark Doty and Jane Hirshfield in Conversation
April 30, 2020
"At times when the outside world’s facts—or the heart’s facts—seem immovable, words still can move."
Interview
Maisy Card: “There is this hazy quality to my family history that no amount of research can clarify.”
April 28, 2020
The author unpacks the archival finds and emotional reckonings behind a novel that took her 12 years to write.
Review
The Porous Boundaries of Longing
April 8, 2020
Garth Greenwell's Cleanness is consciously, cannily, canonical.
Commentary
Apparition
March 26, 2020
Walt Whitman's boundless self persists, even 128 years after his death.
Interview
Mark Bibbins and Paul Lisicky: Sooner or Later
March 20, 2020
The two writers and friends discuss the uses and abuses of nostalgia, cynicism, and trauma porn—and how their new books reflect their experiences of the AIDS crisis.
Review
When All Is “Temporary,” Nothing to Hold Onto
March 13, 2020
Hilary Leichter’s destabilizing debut novel imagines a productivity-centric dystopia, not far off.
Interview
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: “It is not possible to decolonize the museum without decolonizing the world.”
March 12, 2020
The political theorist argues that those whose worlds have been destroyed by five centuries of imperialism have the right to live near the objects that have been plundered from their culture.
Commentary
Ruff Reckoning
March 11, 2020
A look back at Kirsten Bakis’s 1997 novel Lives of the Monster Dogs
Interview
Mira Jacob: I’m Not Going to Hold It for You
March 11, 2020
The acclaimed writer and graphic novelist on the importance of owning your shame.
Commentary
The Cover of My Face
March 10, 2020
A trans author reflects on the fraught history of trans women’s memoir covers, and why she didn’t want her likeness on her own.
Interview
Jenny Offill: The Doomy Bits
March 6, 2020
The author of Weather talks about confronting dread, navigating hope, and how to not write a bad book about climate change.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Emily Wilson
February 24, 2020
The translator on being drawn to Homer, and the timelessness of toxic masculinity.
Commentary
What About Your Grandmother, Jeanine?
February 12, 2020
The author of American Dirt has begun to claim her Puerto Rican heritage. But when the island needed her, she was busy writing an exploitative tale about Mexico.
Commentary
Hanif Abdurraqib and the Performance of Grief
February 10, 2020
On the particular braiding of grief and nostalgia that animates the poet-slash-critic's work.
Interview
Namwali Serpell: “I almost always find my errors productive.”
January 21, 2020
Using archival photos, excerpts from language courses, and eBay finds, the author and critic explains how she mines mistakes for discoveries.
Interview
Carmen Maria Machado: “I speak into the Silence”
December 18, 2019
The writer on intimate partner violence and the forces that made it a hard story to tell.
Review
Everything Hiding the Secret of Its Taste
December 5, 2019
Marie NDiaye’s new novel, The Cheffe, is an ode to wasted love.
Interview
Lilly Dancyger: There Are So Many Different Ways to Be Angry
December 3, 2019
The editor of Burn It Down talks about the stabilizing benefits of women’s anger, the slow pace of change, and why it’s important to take up space on the subway.
Interview
Shannon Pufahl: Queering the Western
November 21, 2019
A slow-burning epic, On Swift Horses paints a new picture of our American mythology.
Interview
Ben Fama: “Life begins once its valorization ends.”
November 15, 2019
The poet talks about his latest book, the economic forces at work behind social media, and the stuffed animals in his life.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: John Murillo
October 21, 2019
The poet discusses chasing butterflies, and the perpetual relevance of political verse.
Interview
Victor LaValle: Imagine Downton Abbey, but with Smells
October 11, 2019
The award-winning writer on editing his first anthology, horror versus sci-fi, and the American tradition of voter suppression.
Back DraftInterview
Back Draft: Martín Espada
August 12, 2019
The poet discusses his relationship with the late Donald Hall and the power of art, incarnate.
Review
Their Daughters Were Having Cats Instead of Children
July 22, 2019
A new collection of Bette Howland's short stories restores a powerful voice to the canon.
Interview
Helen Phillips: “Living with the awareness of the abyss is probably a good thing.”
July 19, 2019
The writer discusses why motherhood lends itself perfectly for speculative fiction—and the album that helped her during writing and labor.
Interview
Ayesha Harruna Attah: “I Write to Find out Who I Am”
July 5, 2019
How the discovery of an ancestor named only “the slave” inspired the Ghanaian author’s latest novel
Interview
Wayne Koestenbaum: “I use obscene as a term of praise.”
July 2, 2019
Critic, essayist, and poet Wayne Koestenbaum talks about the reissue of his only novel to date, Circus, while offering a glimpse of his art works, unpublished writings, and family archive.