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Unpublished journal entries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

Yellow Band

A diagnosis alters a writer's relationship to his work
April 29, 2024
Books

The Polycrisis

Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?
April 24, 2024

Omega Constellation

Unwinding what I lost
April 10, 2024

When Metaphor Gets Literal

What my mother’s coma taught me about reading poems
April 3, 2024

Antique Medical Slides

Specimens of my past and future self
March 20, 2024

Candy Darling’s “Newspaper” Centerfold

Encountering the infamous collage of a downtown legend
March 18, 2024

The Story Wars

The conflict between Red and Blue America is a clash of national mythologies
March 11, 2024
Books

Gender Wars

Two scholars excavate the origins of today’s trans backlash
March 4, 2024

Heat Maps

Desire in the dark
March 4, 2024

Lessons of the Line

Charles Simic and me
March 4, 2024