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Unpublished journal entries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

From the Archives

Genet’s “Prisoner of Love”: The Evolution of a Muslim Saint

Edmund White
January 1, 2012
Essay

My Old Printer

Anne Fadiman
March 12, 2011
From the Archives

Fiction in Review: “Hotel de Dream” by Edmund White

R. Clifton Spargo
July 1, 2008
Essays

The Republic of Letters

Edith Wharton at the Start of Her Career
Hermione Lee
April 1, 2007
From the Archives

On Some Functions of Literature

Umberto Eco,
translated by Martin McLaughlin
October 1, 2004
From the Archives

Letters to Arthur Gold, Robert Fizdale, and James Merrill

Edited with a note by Langdon Hammer
Elizabeth Bishop
April 1, 2003
From the Archives

The Writer’s Audience

Wallace Stegner
January 1, 2003
From the Archives

Letter to a Young Novelist

Mario Vargas Llosa,
translated by Natasha Wimmer
July 1, 2002
Books

Charles Simic

Stephen Yenser
April 1, 2002
From the Archives

Lincoln and Whitman as Representative Americans

David Bromwich
April 1, 2002