“If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
Search results
Posted inStory
‘I Surprise Myself With This Refusal To Let Go’: Kate Zambreno on the ‘Ghostly Correspondence’
“I thought for sure, I’ll never write about Rilke again. I’m done with Rilke! I’m sick of Rilke! Rilke — no more. But then the other day … I just started researching something about Rilke.”
Posted inStory
Naked City
Here, everyone hurries but no one arrives, everyone shows up but no one gets in, everyone’s a member but no one belongs.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How to Grieve Your Friend and Mentor
In this moving personal essay, Amy Jo Burns writes about how the death of her writing mentor, Louise DeSalvo, has affected her, and how reading Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend helped her process her grief.
Posted inArts & Culture, Culture, Essays & Criticism, Feature, Story
Funk Lessons in Sonic Solitude
“Joi’s recorded performances embodied all the funkiness my little soul had been waiting for.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Culture, Essays & Criticism, Feature, profile, Story, Writing
Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes: On Novelist Nettie Jones and the Madness of ‘Fish Tales’
Edited by Toni Morrison, the 1983 novel ‘Fish Tales’ by Nettie Jones was supposed to set the literary world on fire. It didn’t.
Posted inNonfiction
(Who Gets to) Just Up and Move
Nicole Walker contemplates the nature of migration, and realizes there are two places you can never escape: the planet and your own head.
Posted inStory
“I Miss My Body When It Was Ferocious”: The Transfiguration of Paul Curreri
For years, singer-songwriter Paul Curreri was a shouter of singular beauty. Then he went quiet — slowly, at first, then all of a sudden.
Posted inNonfiction
Queens of Infamy: Mariamne I
In the ancient hot mess known as Judea, a young queen had to navigate a self-destructive royal dynasty and one of history’s worst husbands.
Posted inNonfiction
The Joy of Watching (and Rewatching) Movies So Bad They’re Good
Michael Musto sings the praises of his favorite cinematic clunkers.
