This week, we’re sharing stories from Masha Gessen, Molly Osberg, T. S. Mendola, Alexander Chee, and George Murray.
The New York Review of Books
Posted inEditor's Pick
To Be, or Not to Be
A personal essay in which Russian emigre Masha Gessen ruminates on the culture’s tendency to privilege those who’ve suffered for a lack of choice — in becoming refugees, in picking their gender — and the choices (her own, and those of her parents and ancestors) that have impacted her life.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
The High Cost of Becoming a Writer as a Single Mom
Stephanie Land endured poverty, loneliness, and more to pursue her dream of being a writer.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Portrait of the Artist as a Single Mom
In this personal essay, created with support from the non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Stephanie Land chronicles her struggle to support herself and her two daughters while attending college and trying to make a living as a writer.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Memoirist’s Dilemma
Fourteen years after her memoir about about her father’s death was released, novelist Aminatta Forna still deals with after-effects, both good and bad.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Afterlife of a Memoir
Novelist Aminatta Forna writes about the lingering effects, fourteen years later, of having written a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, about the political hanging of her father in Sierra Leone.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
New York City’s Housing Emergency
New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian crisis.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Diane Arbus: Describing the Loneliness that Shames Us
Hilton Als on photographer Diane Arbus’ uncanny ability to capture the humanity of her marginalized subjects.
Posted inBlog Post, Media, Nonfiction
Robert B. Silvers, Editor of The New York Review of Books: 1929-2017
“I believe in the writer—the writer, above all.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Moleskine In Every Satchel, and a Board Game On Every Table
In the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben uses his review of David Sax’s new book, The Revenge of Analog to meditate on the enduring joys of playing board games or writing things with paper and pen, and how they keep us grounded in our humanity.