Literature

Fiction Poetry Biography & Memoir In Translation Essays

Epic Ambitions

A new life of Gertrude Stein treats her as a philosopher of language to trust, not explain—and gathers force from archival discoveries and intriguing plots of her reception and reputation.

February 12, 2026 issue

Regina Marler

Teacher’s Pet

Jane DeLynn’s autobiographical novel In Thrall recounts a same-sex affair between a teenager and her closeted English teacher in the early 1960s, a time when exposure could be more traumatic than exploitation.

February 12, 2026 issue

Adam Kirsch

Things Fall Apart

Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?

February 12, 2026 issue

Kevin Power

All the Sad Unliterary Men

David Szalay’s recent novel Flesh captures with unsparing accuracy the consciousness of an ordinary man in helpless decline.

January 15, 2026 issue

Yiyun Li

A Talent for Living

In Beryl Bainbridge’s novels, to die is an awfully big adventure—and so is to live.

January 15, 2026 issue

Jé Wilson

That Sinking Feeling

Memoirs of survival at sea plunge the reader deep into the heart of human nature.

December 18, 2025 issue

Frances Wilson

Hearing Your Ears Pop

In Patricia Lockwood’s latest novel, catching Covid intensifies a woman’s relationship to language.

December 18, 2025 issue

Michael Dirda

Panoply of the Weird

Little known today, Fitz-James O’Brien deserves serious attention for developing some of science fiction’s most familiar tropes—among them microcosmic worlds, invisible monsters, time slips, and robots.

January 15, 2026 issue

From the Archives

Books and Bookstores

Caitlin O’Keefe

Feminism & Shakespeare and Company

November 18, 2019

Charles Rosen

The Lost Pleasure of Browsing

October 13, 2009

Roberto Bolaño

Who Would Dare?

March 22, 2011

Larry McMurtry

The Last Book Sale

August 17, 2012

Charles Simic

The Books We’ve Lost

August 13, 2013

Tom Vanderbilt

Maestro of the Strand

January 4, 2018

Coming of Age

Sasha Frere-Jones

Intentionality

I remember wanting to be in a band when I was nine.

October 8, 2023

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.

September 29, 2023

Melissa Febos

Dear Judy

Judy Blume gave voice to many of the feelings I experienced during adolescence, but there were some she didn’t name.

August 11, 2023

Lucy Jakub

Love’s Work

In his films for children, Hayao Miyazaki has used the labor-intensive art of animation to study the major problem of adult life.

July 13, 2023

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007)

Elizabeth Hardwick

A selection of Elizabeth Hardwick’s contributions to the New York Review. Read all of her essays here.

Elizabeth Hardwick

On Sylvia Plath

May 23, 2013 issue

Elizabeth Hardwick

Caesar’s Things

September 24, 1970 issue

Elizabeth Hardwick

In Maine

October 7, 1971 issue

Elizabeth Hardwick

The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King

May 9, 1968 issue

Elizabeth Hardwick

Writing a Novel

October 18, 1973 issue

Elizabeth Hardwick

The Menendez Show

February 17, 1994 issue

The Latest

Fernando Pessoa, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari

Two Odes by Ricardo Reis

a poem

February 12, 2026 issue

Ben Lerner

Wars of Religion

a poem

February 12, 2026 issue

Kathleen Ossip

Childhood

a poem

February 12, 2026 issue

Edwin Frank

Our Moments

The sentences in Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World are acts of attention, as uncertain and unstable as life itself.

January 6, 2026

Joe Dunthorne

High Mountains

a poem

January 15, 2026 issue

Maureen N. McLane

Albergo Caffaro

a poem

January 15, 2026 issue

Robert Sietsema

When the Spleen Ran Out

Memories of East Village restaurants, circa 1977

December 4, 2025

John Banville

Henry James’s ‘Dear Native Land’

The writer’s 1904 tour of America left him little less than horrified at what he encountered.

December 18, 2025 issue

Ishion Hutchinson

Inter Alia, North Carolina Trees

a poem

December 18, 2025 issue

Lindsay Turner

Madonna

a poem

December 18, 2025 issue

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