The writer and editor on resisting the expectations for minority voices, her French-inflected prose, and the complications that make life worthwhile.

By the time I finished my editorial work on this year’s edition of The Best American Travel Writing—about five weeks into my state’s mandatory stay-at-home order—I’d had plenty of time to think about the future of the form. During the first few weeks

On John Washington’s The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond

In the books I read growing up, there were always words I couldn’t quite imagine. I remember, with a specificity that surprises me, the foreignness of certain colors: kelly green, strawberry blonde. These were books about girls with doting fathers an

I never know how to be fashionably late. That’s Klara’s talent. We’d picked a place to meet that was about halfway between the two of us. It was a little closer to me, and while in the cab, I savored the small accomplishment of being the one with the

As we navigate life during COVID-19, science doesn't have all the answers. But queer theory might.

A debut novel reminds us that the earth itself is alive, and that even in our isolation we are members of a changing world.

When my father’s death dissolved my life’s plot, I could only cling to someone else’s story.

To the school’s auditorium, the woman brought liters of Gatorade®, stowing them in her backpack the way a cosmonaut might carry extra air tanks.

The novelist and memoirist discusses generational trauma, developing compassion for oneself, and feeling empowered by choice.

A younger boy swore he’d seen one of the pigs standing on its hind legs, peering through his trailer window.

I have a friend who texts me poems every day. My phone chimes while I’m pouring my morning coffee. Today’s poem is by Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “I am signaling you through the flames. / The North Pole is not where it used to be. / Manifest destiny is no

1. From my living room window in Montevideo, Uruguay, at sunset, I see a young couple on the roof of the tall apartment building across the street. Now that we are under quarantine, there have been people out all day on their azoteas, the flat roofs

These days, every day is the same: I play with my three-year-old neighbor. At night, I call the hospital. Before I go to bed, I upload my photos.

The day of the bombings, July seventh, Seven-Seven, a day of doubles, Gavin Thomas, the fund researcher, had been unharried.

Years ago, in a dark noisy pub, the man I was talking to reached over and put his fingertips to my cheeks. He was saying something about intimacy and the many ways of it. We’d met a few weeks earlier. He was kind and smart and we’d been laughing a lo

Miranda Popkey’s debut novel, Topics of Conversation, traces ten significant encounters over twenty years, each of which shapes the unnamed female narrator’s views on gender and sexual politics. The excerpt above brings together a group of single mot

The Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez remains an enigma, despite, or because of, her place at Castro's side.

“It’s quite a lot of sadness, in realizing that everything you love about the world is falling to pieces.”

"At times when the outside world’s facts—or the heart’s facts—seem immovable, words still can move."

The author unpacks the archival finds and emotional reckonings behind a novel that took her 12 years to write.

In books and movies we've imagined it would take a gruesome virus to push working people to the edge. In reality, late capitalism is enough.

My mother is unlearning the way to walk;              feels her hand with her other hand,              then drags her cheeks flat in the mirror                            to smooth her frightened face. Her mother asks Are you disappointed?        

The shed is dark except for the triangle of dusty sunlight that reaches through the crooked doorway. You and Adam are huddled in the back, breathing hard. Notice the dark: darker than the empty baseball fields in moonless winter; darker than sleep.

Photos of Earth taken from space can teach us about how we think—about our home planet, and its place in the universe.

The poet and critic on “coalitional writing,” upending the avant-garde, and Asian American identities.

The plan was to meet Maria Saleh Mahameed at noon at the Herzliya Museum, north of Tel Aviv. She was giving a gallery talk in Hebrew on her mural Ana Hoon (“I Am Here” in Arabic), which was installed on a large wall at the entrance of the museum, in

My mother invited her estranged brother to our house on Long Island when I was six years old. I remember pink rhododendron, a white dress with yellow flowers. I remember the not-unpleasant sense that something important was happening. But I don’t rem

I haven’t cried, yet. “The first thing you ever did was cry,” counters Heather Christle, early in The Crying Book. In an interview about the unfolding emotional effects of COVID-19, “death and grieving expert” David Kessler suggests that grief is “no

Light! Light! I hear her calling when she’s a block away as if she’s a monger of light. She kneels at my feet, says I see you’ve been wallowing, it smells like salt in here. Well I’ve lost so many and my dead women call out as I sleep. She comes to t