So Much At Risk: Talking with Christopher Soto
If I am audacious enough to imagine [my] reader, then I imagine this is a person who has never had the option to look away.
Features & Reviews
9282 posts
Perfectly Made and Frighteningly Fragile: This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris
We must learn to see the divine even in our sorrow
The Present in Its Most Vivid Colors: A Conversation with Ben Shattuck
What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?
Clock time has really lost all meaning: An interview with Jos Charles
Some work must be done up very close.
“Do You Hearest?”: A Review of Ova Completa by Susana Thénon, tr. Rebekah Smith
Where are you, Susana Thénon?—which I think might mean: How does Thénon achieve something more than evasion and isolation with all of this wandering around? Does she land somewhere?—“In a room where if I am I’m not or I am who cares”
No Way to Avoid Things Mattering: A Dream Life by Claire Messud
The placement of a marquee tent at a party or the tension between the caterer and a housekeeper take on outsized importance.
Bringing the Exterior into our Private Rooms: A Conversation with Victoria Chang
There’s no reason for cruelty; the joy is in the writing. I always try to remember why I started doing this thing: Because I had to. It’s not a choice for many of us writers to write, but we do have a choice about whether we’re going to be nice or not.
What to Read When It’s the End of the World
. . . a list of books that I feel are worth reaching for in times like ours—some because they are apocalyptic and heavy in subject or tone, others because they are satirical, and others because of how they show parts of the world that make it worth staying in or show a world so foreign to ours that it helps medicate against some of the tunnel vision of our times
Sketch book Reviews: Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
An illustrated review of TIME IS A MOTHER by Ocean Vuong.
why deer and poetry mix so well: A conversation with Caitlin Scarano
When you say, “Oh I run, but I’m not a runner,” it’s like when people say, “Oh I write, but I’m not a writer.” You’re doing it. You just do it and it does get better and there are simple things you can do to make it easier.
On the Mystery of Eating Meat: Springer Mountain by Wyatt Williams
If you eat meat, then you are an animal who kills other animals. Humans are not alone in this, but more than all other creatures of the earth, we have gotten grotesquely good at it.
I Don’t Sing to Be Heard, I Do It to Keep On: An interview with Ashanti Anderson
“It is impossible to be at peace without understanding.”