In The New York Times Magazine Susan Burton profiles “national interviewer” Terry Gross, who celebrates 40 years behind the microphone as the host of NPR’s Fresh Air.
Krista Stevens
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes
Chuck Klosterman on the Success of Taylor Swift, and the Word ‘Calculating’
If you don’t take Swift seriously, you don’t take contemporary music seriously. With the (arguable) exceptions of Kanye West and Beyoncé Knowles, she is the most significant pop artist of the modern age. The scale of her commercial supremacy defies parallel—she’s sold 1 million albums in a week three times, during an era when most […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Pablo Escobar: Renaissance Man
As dusk settles on the Magdalena Valley, the jungly middle stretch of Colombia’s great river basin, the hippopotamuses bawl and snort. The indelicate groans of these multi-ton beasts border on comedic, but mostly their ruckus is a fearsome thing—a primal ritual that has churned these waters ever since Pablo Escobar imported four hippos to his […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes
A Sort of Readiness: Ursula K. Le Guin
A conversation between two novelists — Choire Sicha chats with Ursula K. Le Guin.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Jenny Diski Remembers Doris Lessing: Why Can’t People Be Sensible?
Jenny Diski remembers Doris Lessing’s unemotional approach to motherhood and life.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Ravaged Yet Connected: New Orleans, Ten Years After Katrina
At Esquire, Charles P. Pierce reflects on the “boundless loss and endless opportunity” of New Orleans ten years after Hurricane Katrina.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Palpable, Yet ‘Incomprehensible Expanse of Time’: A Wilderness of Waiting
I am used to pausing beside train trestles, tilting my head to watch passing planes, perpetually looking forward to: to the evening, to the weekend, to the next year in a new place. But for the first time I find myself unable to fix my gaze on the horizon; I find my relationship to time […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Guns ‘R (Still) Us
Out-of-state residents can purchase firearms in Arizona read the sign behind the counter at Sprague’s Sports in Yuma. ASK US HOW. I asked a clerk named Ron for details. He was short, packed solid as a ham, with a crew cut and a genial demeanor. He pointed to the cavalcade of hunting rifles lined up […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Quitting the Internet, Cold Turkey
The advice offered to me by people when I explain I am going to live by myself in the woods for a week varies from the sensible (“Develop a routine”) to the frankly awful (“Take some weed!”). But it is Michael Harris, the Canadian author who published a book in 2014 called The End of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Limits, or How to Avoid the Precipice Between Courage and Humility
I need to tell you about the Cirque of the Unclimbables. Ever since I went there, I’ve tried to describe it to friends and family, tried to explain its power and its perfection. It is, I tell people, the best natural campsite I have ever visited. It’s also among the most beautiful eyefuls of landscape […]