Bassey Ikpi discusses writing about mental illness. “I could count on the morning. It became the thing that existed without my input… without determining whether or not I was worthy of it.”
interviews
Posted inNonfiction
‘Horror Is a Soothing Genre … It’s Upfront About How Scary It Is To Be a Woman.’
Sady Doyle discusses the connection she draws between society’s monstrous treatment of women and woman’s archetypal monstrosity.
Posted inNonfiction
‘We Live in an Atmosphere of General Inexorability’: An Interview with Jia Tolentino
Jia Tolentino talks about what kinds of personalities thrive online, why she is suspicious of her own self-narrative, and the pervading sense that everything’s spiraling out of control.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: ‘The Basket Isn’t a Metaphor, It’s an Example’
The editors of “Shapes of Native Nonfiction” talk about the craft of writing, the politics of metaphor, and resisting the exploitation of trauma.
Posted inBooks
What Is Elizabeth Rush Reading? : Books on Antarctic Adventure, Ice, Motherhood
“I sometimes wonder if this continent of ice is begging for a different kind of story to be told about it.”
Posted inStory
‘If an Animal Talks, I’m Sold’: An Interview with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Ann and Jeff Vandermeer discuss talking animals, the weird/fantasy divide, and the ‘rate of fey’ as an organizing principle in their new anthology of classic fantasy.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
Why Bugs Deserve Our Respect
Fruit flies helped us win six Nobel prizes in medicine. Architects have been inspired by termite hills. Ecologist Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson explains why bugs are so essential to the world we live in.
Posted inBooks, Crime, History, investigations, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
A Manson Murder Investigation 20 Years In the Making: ‘There Are Still Secrets’
‘Everything that Manson did with his women was exactly what the CIA was trying to do with people without their knowledge, in the exact same time, at the exact same place.’
Posted inNonfiction
‘TV Has This Really Fraught Relationship with the Audience.’
Emily Nussbaum talks about why TV’s relationship with its audience has become more intimate, whether we can blame Trump on True Detective, and how a TV critic’s biggest challenge is just figuring out what to watch.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story, Technology
‘Nothing Kept Me Up At Night the Way the Gorgon Stare Did.’
The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology that can track multiple moving targets at once, is coming to a city near you.