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Unpublished journal entries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

Ibsen the Pioneer

Stella Adler
April 1, 1999
From the Archives

The Mask of Art

Edmund White
April 1, 1999
From the Archives

An Open Book

Edmund White
July 1, 1997
From the Archives

Secret Maps

Holly Wright's Photographs of Hands
Charles Simic
October 1, 1996
From the Archives

The Burning Book: Genet and Cocteau

Edmund White
October 1, 1993
From The Archives

Imagining Black Men: The Politics of Cultural Identity

Hazel V. Carby
July 1, 1992
Black and white photo of light coming through windows in the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna with mosaics. Courtesy N.P. Sullo.
Essays

Days of 1952

On the rapture of experiencing art in solitude
James Merrill
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

Fiction in Review

Marilynne Robinson
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

From My Cornell Notebooks

Charles Simic
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

The Religion-Making Imagination of Joseph Smith

Harold Bloom
April 1, 1992