Six Flash Fiction Stories by Contemporary Writers
Compact narratives of precision and surprise, by Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, Stuart Dybek, Venita Blackburn, and more.
The Intimate Memorials of a Ladies Literary Club
These remembrances reveal a century of women’s friendships in one Midwestern literary club.
Why Does Music in Science Fiction Sound Like That?
Imagining the sound of other worlds has a long past—and persistent creative limits.
Inside a Four-Million-Word Diary of 1860s New York
George Templeton Strong chronicles Civil War–era New York with unmatched immediacy, capturing daily life and upheaval.
Just Wilde About Hair
The evolution of Oscar Wilde’s hair offers insight into how he constructed and revised his public identity.
10 Prose Poems That Think Outside the Line
Poems that blur the boundaries of form, by Claudia Rankine, Louise Glück, Victoria Chang, Arthur Rimbaud, Layli Long Soldier, Mary Ruefle, and more.
A Reader’s Guide to Poetry for National Poetry Month
Read poems, learn poetic forms, and discover writers in this National Poetry Month roundup.
Returning to Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez
A literary classic doubles as data, helping scientists trace decades of ecological change in the Gulf of California.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mechanical Imagination
Behind The Raven’s melancholy lies a theory of composition shaped by magazines, machines, and modernity.
Dana Elle Murphy on Black Feminist Criticism
An interview with Dana Elle Murphy, whose work explores how drafts, fragments, and literary lineages expand our understanding of Black women’s writing.