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Unpublished journal entries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

Black-and-white photo of Ellen Bryant Voigt writing at her desk in 2015
Tribute

Ellen Bryant Voigt

Four poets remember a singular mentor
Catherine Barnett,
Victoria Chang,
Meghan O’Rourke,
and
Carl Phillips
October 28, 2025
Books

Thomas Pynchon Is Angry

In Shadow Ticket, the novelist takes on America’s indifference to history
Richard Beck
October 27, 2025
Taylor Swift in an embellished white military coat and booties under a cloud of confetti during the Eras Tour
Essay of the Week

How We’ve Misunderstood Taylor Swift

The Life of a Showgirl received mixed reviews from fans and critics. But it may be her most honest work yet.
Stephanie Burt
October 20, 2025
Essay of the Week

How Sober Should a Writer Be?

F. Scott Fitzgerald and the ambivalence of American drinking culture
Sloane Crosley
October 6, 2025
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
Books

Green, Lively, and Full of Decay

Why Claire-Louise Bennett’s epistolary style is the one for our times
Audrey Wollen
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
Books

The Richard Siken Effect

How Crush changed American poetry—and found a second life online
Richie Hofmann
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