Essays

Essays

Toni Morrison’s Native Figures

A new reading of race in her novels
Namwali Serpell
Folio

How LLMs Set My Fiction Free

Writing no longer felt like experimenting. AI made it fun again.
Christopher Sorrentino
Folio

My AI Boyfriend

A cynic enters the data pool
Lauren Oyler
Folio

Chasing Alice

The life and death of a chatbot
Sheila Heti
Folio

Donna Haraway’s Utopian Promise

We were supposed to become feminist cyborgs. Instead, we got ChatGPT.
Meghan O’Gieblyn
Folio

Jagged Intelligence

The dangerous unknowns at the heart of LLMs
Melanie Mitchell

Browse

Essays

Grayscale image of an excavated Cycladic figure face down in the dirt on the island of Keros in July 1967
Essays

Cycladic Figurines and Their Mysteries

An excavation in fragments
Adina Hoffman
September 8, 2025
Essays

How Mrs. Dalloway Began

Slipping into Virginia Woolf’s sentences
Edmund de Waal
September 8, 2025
Black-and-white photo of an empty canal on the island of Murano in Venice, Italy
Essays

The Husband

My three trips to Venice, before and after marriage
Anne Enright
September 8, 2025
A color photo of Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk at Trump’s second inauguration
Essays

Trump Is Only a Symptom

The crisis that America can’t change at the ballot box
Rana Dasgupta
September 8, 2025
Essays

What Is a Poetic Novel?

A newly translated manifesto
Hélène Bessette,
translated by Kate Briggs
September 8, 2025
Grayscale AI rendering of road-rage victim Christopher Pelkey
Essays

When AI Speaks for the Dead

A murder victim recently addressed a defendant with the help of AI. What are the limits of our new reality?
Patricia J. Williams
September 8, 2025
Crabs cooking in a pot of steaming water
Objects of Desire

Blue Crabs

Eating them the way God intended
Joseph Earl Thomas
June 9, 2025
A pair of weathered wood doors with peeling orange paint
Objects of Desire

Doorknobs

I never installed them. What doors could they have opened?
Katie Kitamura
June 9, 2025
Objects of Desire

Salomé

I gave my daughter the name my mother wanted—but who was her namesake?
Colombe Schneck
June 9, 2025
Abstract photo of bent-over nude
A Closer Read

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell
June 9, 2025