Chairs the world over have loved me, and I love them all back.
Books
Hot for Teacher
When a student in her writing workshop submits a piece suggesting his character could ‘take’ a teacher just like her ‘atop her desk,’ Courtney Zoffness is flooded with memories of men touching her against her will.
The Migrant in the Mirror
In recent novels, Ocean Vuong and Nicole Dennis-Benn tell stories in which young queer characters affected by migration and displacement are worthy of seeing themselves reflected in others.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’
Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance
In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
The Geography of Risk
Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth, so why do taxpayers have to pay for the hurricane damage to rich coastal communities?
One Man’s Poison
The only way to protect herself from her father was to erase him from her life, but she survived being his daughter by acting just like he did.
The Story of Country Music’s Great Songwriting Duo
Before they released “Wichita Lineman,” the greatest unfinished song of all time, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb lived surprisingly parallel lives.
In the Age of the Psychonauts
Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland”
‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
