Nine essays and interviews from literature’s favorite laureate of compassion.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
George Saunders Says Ditching These Three Delusions Can Save You
“He’s as flawed a human being as anyone else, one who’s still wrestling with questions about how best to move through life with a modicum of grace and compassion.”
Posted inQuotes
The Unlikely Hero in George Saunders’ Short Story, ‘The Falls’
And he “…stopped in his tracks, wondering what in the world two little girls were doing alone in a canoe speeding toward the Falls, apparently oarless.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Maria Popova
The creator of The Marginalian and author of the new book Traversal responds to 25 questions on writing, reading, and creativity.
Posted inNewsletter
The Search for Answers, and the Week’s Top 5
“Words only ever do so much. But, time and again, Saunders’s words—in his own stories, and in conversation—reveal their utility. They insist on our dignity, however and wherever they find us. And they help us extend the same dignity to others.” This week my wife and I watched the documentary Cover-Up, about journalist Seymour Hersh […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
How The Cult of Masculinity Can Poison Creative Writing Programs
There are numerous ways to tell stories. In her turn MFA program, one writer encountered a literary culture that espoused gendered aesthetics and fostered toxic masculinity.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
The Science of Dreaming
Science journalist Alice Robb on why we need to take our dreams seriously.
Posted inEditor's Pick
George Saunders: What Writers Really Do When They Write
George Saunders reflects on his writing process, suggesting that the magical, romantic notion where fully formed art leaps from the author’s brain on to the page does the writer, the reader, and the work a disservice. In reality, it takes “hundreds of drafts” and “thousands of incremental adjustments” to form a story into a “hopeful […]
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Fiction, Story
A Mysterious Crack Appears: Past Trauma and Future Doom Meet in “Friday Black”
In Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s fantastical short story collection, the strangest fantasy of all is that people try to act morally in a corrupt world.
