Summer 2021

Summer 2021 cover image

Volume 109, No. 2
Summer 2021
The Yale Review

Buy This Issue

Cover: Collier Schorr, Radio, 2005.

Table of Contents

Nonfiction

Black and white still showing Giulietta Masina smiling with a black tear at the corner of her eye
Essays

How to Come Back to Life

On reaching middle age and carrying on
Emily Ogden
June 28, 2021
Series of stills of author doing a poetry reading.
Essays

I Killed, I Died

Banter, self-destruction, and the poetry reading
Douglas Kearney
June 28, 2021
Black and white portrait of Machado de Assis
Books

Machado de Assis’s Afterlives

The Brazilian novelist’s overlooked politics
Ratik Asokan
June 28, 2021
Blue and yellow illustration with two faces on either side of a hanging lamp
Books

No-No Man

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s nihilist masterpiece
Roy Scranton
June 28, 2021
Graphic with book pages and blue designs of windows and cats
Essays

The Heart of Fiction

Storytelling, experience, and truth
Hernan Diaz
June 28, 2021
Essays

The Subject of Pain

On Louise Bourgeois
Madhu H. Kaza
June 28, 2021
Interior view of library.
Essays

What Space is For

The forking paths of memory and return
Mairead Small Staid
June 28, 2021
Person moves out of view in a dark area.
Essays

Picturing Catastrophe

The visual politics of racial reckoning
Rizvana Bradley
May 25, 2021

Fiction

Landscape with blue mountains, a pink sun, and graphic of cars at bottom of frame
Fiction

The Glacier

Idra Novey
June 28, 2021
Fiction

Where They Always Meet

Christos Ikonomou
and
Karen Emmerich
June 28, 2021
Black and white image of a cafeteria with illustration of a building and low-hanging lights superimposed.
Fiction

Subaqueous

Joyce Carol Oates
June 16, 2021

Poetry

Detail from a mother of pearl Inro. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Poetry

A Nacreous Woman

Sally Wen Mao
June 28, 2021
Graphic with images of a plane crash and shipwreck. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos.
Poetry

Air Disaster

James Hannaham
June 28, 2021
A sepia landscape with a mountain in the background and orange path through valley. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

Ascent

D. Nurkse
June 28, 2021
Graphic with scene of a person walking on a shoreline and a sunset. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

At Newport Beach

Sarina Romero
June 28, 2021
Red painted background with overlay of a cicada wing. Illustration by NP Sullo.
Poetry

At the George Caleb Bingham House, Arrow Rock, Missouri

G. C. Waldrep
June 28, 2021
Sketch with scene from column capital at St. John the Divine, New York. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

Bridge 14. Feb. 45

Karl Kirchwey
June 28, 2021
Cherries. Photo: Kristiane Wentzel.
Poetry

Cherry Picking Season

Sally Wen Mao
June 28, 2021
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The NY Public Library. (1941).
Poetry

Cows. They Have Stupid Eyes, Friend So Dear

Marianne Boruch
June 28, 2021
Close up of a peacock feather. Photo: Amber Flowers.
Poetry

Divine Transformation

Natasha Rao
June 28, 2021
hand holding a cricket mallet. Photo: Yogendra Singh.
Poetry

Fullness and Hunger

Natasha Rao
June 28, 2021
Woman with her arms crossed resting her head on a table. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos.
Poetry

Glances

James Hannaham
June 28, 2021
Two hands on a graphic black and white background. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

Race in the Mind

Shane McCrae
June 28, 2021
Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos. Two satyrs with a blue background.
Poetry

Satyr’s Flute

Shangyang Fang
June 28, 2021
Graphic with blue white and black shapes in a black frame. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

Teaching Emily Dickinson in Beirut

Averill Curdy
June 28, 2021
Graphic of a living room. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Poetry

The Arrow Creek Fire

D. Nurkse
June 28, 2021
A view of a landscape through a circular opening. Illustration by NP Sullo
Poetry

To Each Light of Which I Am a Brother

G. C. Waldrep
June 28, 2021

Interviews

Portraits of Caleb Smith and Rachel Kushner
Conversations

Discipline and Abolish

Writing, power, and mass incarceration
Rachel Kushner
and
Caleb Smith
June 28, 2021

Portfolios

Portfolio

Terrains of the Imaginary

Finding escape in survey maps
Geoff Manaugh
June 28, 2021

More Issues

Summer 2026 cover image

Summer 2026

View Issue

Spring 2026 cover image

Spring 2026

View Issue

Winter 2025 cover image

Winter 2025

View Issue

Fall 2025 cover image

Fall 2025

View Issue

Summer 2025 cover image

Summer 2025

View Issue

Spring 2025 cover image

Spring 2025

View Issue