Stories by Wendell Berry, Mark Fabiano, Cristina Henríquez, Aryn Kyle, Jess Row, Julie Schumacher, plus new voices in American fiction.
If Tess takes ballet lessons, Meredith will give Tess tights and toe shoes, and marry Tess’s father. She will stay forever.
Interview: Aryn Kyle talks about the American West as a character, writing from a child's perspective, and her debut novel, The God of Animals
What Jarrat had in his life were sorrow, stubbornness, silence, and work. So when his sons needed him most, their daddy didn’t have much to offer.
I don’t let them forget anything. I tell them to remember it alphabetically: breasts, cervix, ovaries, uterus. Lying on my back, I take them through it, one exam at a time.
“Dad’s real proud of you,” I said. “Said it’s too bad you’re a thief, though. You could have done something good.”
“You left because you thought I was weak,” Joseph said. “What you didn’t know was that you were the person who was going to make me strong.”
Ranil wanted a company scholarship for his son, and would do what he must to make the American executive feel well cared for.
The marina had a proposition for him. They wanted him to leave, and they were willing to pay him to do it.
Tom wanted him to be prepared, to know what he was up against. But Gurukha didn’t want a pistol in his house. He wanted to move on, to be done with India, and with Amritsar.
Mary Jo Salter talks about her new collection, Phone Call to the Future; editing The Norton Anthology of Poetry; and her early days as an assistant poetry editor at The Atlantic.
A month of living in a suitcase, eating in airports, and cracking your forehead open against hotel-room walls in the middle of the night often comes to very little. But the only thing worse than going on book tour is not going.
Doin' It in the Park: No Gatorade (Excerpt)
The Visual Clichés of Instagram
Synthetic Biology
David H. Freedman on smartphone apps and the perfected self, Mark Bowden on being in the dumb kids' class, James Parker on Glenn Beck, Isaac Chotiner on P. G. Wodehouse, and more
Browse back issues of The Atlantic that have appeared on the Web. From September 1995 to the present, the archive is essentially complete, with the exception of a few articles, the online rights to which are held exclusively by the authors.
See All Back Issues: September 1995
Marvin Kalb Proud to Defend Arnaud De Borchgrave
What the Web Knows About the Canadian Foot-Mailing Suspect
The 11 Days Zuckerberg Spent as One of the 40 Richest Humans
What Critics Get Wrong About Creative Cities
Great Moments in the History of Boondoggles
The Pseudo-Suburbanist's Dilemma
