Nonfiction

Writing

Unpublished journal entries

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial

The End of Books

What happened when a dumpster arrived behind my university's library

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels

Browse

Nonfiction

Is Blasphemy Illiberal?

Salman Rushdie’s thoroughly modern controversies
September 9, 2024

Richard Pryor

A fiction
September 9, 2024

The Path to Playwright

Discovering my literary hero in an unlikely place
September 9, 2024

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
September 9, 2024

Vintage Merch

Buying someone else’s history
September 9, 2024

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
September 9, 2024

The Frictions of Interracial Love

How one fundamental difference can color every aspect of marriage
September 5, 2024

The Poet as a Young Critic

In Thom Gunn’s early work for The Yale Review, he valued style above all else
June 27, 2024

Kurt Cobain and Jenny Holzer on 42nd Street

A chance decision made an iconic photograph. Thirty years later, what does it reveal?
June 19, 2024

The Living Practice of Criticism

A reply to my respondents
June 17, 2024