From Edward Hirsch, an “intensely personal” attempt to define the American experience through poetry
Lighting the way: 2022 National Black Writers Conference documents resilience and resistance
Why The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finest hour—and why an authoritative text matters
“Language as a weapon against the seemingly incomprehensible” in three war memoirs
The pathbreaking Virginia Hamilton and her “liberation literature”
Jonathan R. Eller on Ray Bradbury, “first and foremost a teller of tales”
Meet S. J. Perelman, the “writer’s writer” who was audacious, original, and funny
Ben Yagoda: Presenting an O. Henry for the twenty-first century
Larry Lockridge: Why it’s time to reassess Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit
“You’re not reading your grandfather’s short story”— Charles McGrath on the fiction of Donald Barthelme
“Engaging, embracing, confiding, and humane”—David Quammen on the work of E. O. Wilson
Endpapers: A family story about books, belonging, and the bloodlands of 20th-century Europe
The worlds of Octavia E. Butler: “There’s real danger in these stories”
Nicholas Lemann: Challenges to American democracy are “ever-present”
Robert W. Trogdon on Ernest Hemingway’s Paris years, “a magical time for modern literature”
Roads not taken: Andrew H. Miller discusses On Not Being Someone Else
