Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
essays
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Cooking Was My Mother’s Principal Weapon’
From E.J. Levy’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”—an essay I consider one of my favorites.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The People Who Are Impossible for Lipreaders to Decipher
Rachel Kolb has been deaf since birth and in Stanford magazine, she writes about learning how to lipread and describes what it’s like to read the lips of people with accents or who over-enunciate.
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Beverly Cleary on Fatherhood, via 'Ramona and Her Father'
At Avidly, Stephanie Lucianovic rereads the ‘Ramona’ books from Beverly Cleary and gains a new appreciation for Cleary’s writing, as well as a new perspective on the theme of parenting found within the books. Here’s Lucianovic on Ramona’s father: Running throughout the entire Ramona and Beezus oeuvre, and illustrated by Mr. Quimby’s ill-fated career, is […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When We Left the Kids in the Car
In Salon, Kim Brooks writes about a time when she left her four-year-old son in her car for five minutes while she ran an errand, and ended up in legal trouble after a bystander recorded the incident and contacted the police.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Tech Boom, Then and Now
In Guernica, Nathan Deuel visits the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter and writes about how the recent tech boom has changed the city. Here, Deuel recalls being in college during the first dot-com boom when working for a website felt like a novel idea, and before, as he later writes in […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Perfect Essay, Kafka’s Abyss, and My Mother
The relationship between writer and teacher is no simple thing. For John Kaag, a former professor of expository writing at Harvard, the most vital component of this relationship is intimacy. Despite the persistent image of the writer as solitary figure, Kang sees companionship–specifically critical companionship–as essential. For many writers, the search for a truly compatible teacher–the Gordon […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
We No Longer Drop Dead as Frequently as We Used to
Jacob M. Appel practices medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and his writing has appeared in numerous literary journals.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Reading List: Leslie Jamison, Author of ‘The Empathy Exams’
“When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say ‘all kinds,’ but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.” – Leslie Jamison This week, Choose Your Own Adventure with Leslie Jamison. I’ve compiled a […]
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Reading List: Leslie Jamison, Author of ‘The Empathy Exams’
“When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say ‘all kinds,’ but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.” – Leslie Jamison This week, Choose Your Own Adventure with Leslie Jamison. I’ve compiled a […]