the awl

  • This Week in Essays

    A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!

  • Lady Killers and Our Obsession with Murder: Talking with Tori Telfer

    Lady Killers and Our Obsession with Murder: Talking with Tori Telfer

    Tori Telfer discusses her first book Lady Killers and the fragile “social saran wrap” that keeps us all from killing each other.

  • This Week in Essays

    For Guernica, Carmen Maria Machado writes about cultural myths around large women and fighting to take up space with her body and her mind. Woe be to those who buy the Peggy couch. Anna Hezel pens a hilarious “buyer beware” at The Awl.…

  • Transportation Sobriety Assistance

    Writing for The Awl, Kristi Coulter gives sound advice on how to avoid airport bars: Once you’ve left the multiplex, you can swing by the Puppy Zone, or curl up in a big armchair, or — for fearful flyers — have a drop-in hypnotherapy…

  • Bridging the Writing Gap

    At The Awl, Jo Livingstone discusses the divide between academic and popular writing. In this first installment of a two-part series, she is joined by David Wolf, the commissioning editor of the Guardian’s Long Read section, who offers the editor’s perspective…

  • Too Many Books

    If you’re only holding onto that copy of Infinite Jest to prove that you finished it, it might be time to let go. At The Awl, Nell Beram offers tips for spring-cleaning your book collection: “But what if I like those…

  • The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Heather Havrilesky

    The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Heather Havrilesky

    We are in a chaotic mess of a world, and our lives are going to be chaotic messes no matter how victorious and shiny we manage to become.

  • Censoring Censorship

    Emma Garman discusses the ability of UK’s elite to pay lawyers to keep their names out of the press. She raises the topics of censorship, public interest, and the availability of these resources to people of all classes: The loftiest…

  • No Time Like Now

    At 87 years old, filmmaker and countercultural icon Alejandro Jodorowsky continues to make art at an intimidating pace. He spoke with Anthony Paletta at The Awl about, among other things, his upcoming film Endless Poetry and the three additional films he’s…

  • The Changing Face of Philadelphia Media

    For The Awl, Andrew Thompson writes on the changing face of local media in Philadelphia, after the close of several local print papers and the rise of Philadelphia magazine.

  • The Role of the Critical Writer

    For The Awl, Maria Bustillos sits down for lunch with writer Teju Cole in Bali, where Cole recently spoke at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. The two discuss art, colonialism, and the role of the critical writer. Regarding the latter, Cole…

  • Spelling Reformed

    At The Awl, Annie Abrams gives the history of a 19th-century newspaper, Di Anglo-Sacsun, and its editors’ attempts to make literacy more available to the public, by developing their own phonetic alphabet that the newspaper was written in. Abrams also dives…