Nonfiction

Memoir

Writing

Unpublished journal entries
Annie Ernaux
Objects of Desire

My Screenshots

In search of lost memes
Sarah Thankam Mathews
The Moment

The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial
Samuel Moyn
Essays

The End of Books

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

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years
Kathryn Lofton
Essays

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels
Namwali Serpell

Browse

Nonfiction

The author with her sister in childhood.
Essays

There I Almost Am

On envy and twinship
Jean Garnett
May 19, 2021
people walking in front of a building, black and whtie photo
Essays

We Have a Body

The deaths of patients—and colleagues
Suzanne Koven
May 19, 2021
Adam Zagajewski. Courtesy Donostia Kultura
Tribute

Adam Zagajewski

Remembering a poet of the human soul
Ilya Kaminsky
May 6, 2021
A woman at the beach with a watermelon
Essays

The Wild, Sublime Body

Learning how to be human
Melissa Febos
March 10, 2021
Men in an airport lounge
Books

Olga Tokarczuk’s Radical Tenderness

Reading the Nobel winner's oeuvre
Marek Makowski
February 16, 2021
A version of the California flag with "Twitter" replacing "California" in the banner's text section
Essays

Against Abdicating Power to Big Tech

We can’t rely on Big Tech to reign over online speech
Claire Bond Potter
February 1, 2021
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Pandemic Files

My Summer of Julien Gracq

Reading a French novelist’s examination of liminal space in a plague year
Seth Lerer
January 11, 2021
Still from Pen15, a television show
Television

Act Your Age

Swapping bodies, swapping ages, and re-inventing youth
Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey
December 21, 2020
A swirling pattern on green background
Essays

Notes Upon Arrival

A diary of immigration and lost love
Bhanu Kapil
December 1, 2020
Photo of gears and machinery
Essays

The Anti-Extinction Engine

Langston Hughes and my friend, the apocalypse actuary
Anne Boyer
December 1, 2020