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The Atlantic Writers Project

Contemporary Atlantic writers reflect on 25 voices from the archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.

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Editor’s Picks

Nathan Benn / Getty
One Nation, Slightly Divisible
The electoral map of the 2000 presidential race became famous: big blocks of red (denoting states that went for Bush) stretched across the heartland, with brackets of blue (denoting states for Gore) along the coasts. Our Blue America correspondent has ventured repeatedly into Red territory. He asks the question—after September 11, a pressing one—Do our differences effectively split us into two nations, or are they just cracks in a still-united whole?
David Brooks
December 2001 Issue
C. F. Payne
1491
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought.
Charles C. Mann
March 2002 Issue
Greg Kahn
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they’ve failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” tragically helped create this system, it’s time to reclaim his original intent.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
October 2015 Issue
Guy Billout
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
What the Internet is doing to our brains
Nicholas Carr
July/August 2008 Issue
Jasu Hu
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.
Jean M. Twenge
September 2017 Issue
Philip Toledano
Why Women Still Can’t Have It All
It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.
Anne-Marie Slaughter
July/August 2012 Issue
Mark Pernice
The Curious Case of Jesus’s Wife
Lab tests have suggested that a papyrus scrap mentioning Jesus’s wife is authentic. Why do most scholars believe it’s fake?
Joel Baden and Candida Moss
December 2014 Issue

Discover Atlantic writers

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates, the author of Between the World and Me, wrote “The Case for Reparations” as a national correspondent for The Atlantic.
Virginia Woolf
Woolf was a novelist and a pioneer of literary modernism.
Rachel L. Carson
Before writing Silent Spring, Carson made her mark as an environmental journalist with the Atlantic essay “Undersea.”
E. B. White
White was an essayist, a novelist, and a grammarian. His Atlantic essay “Death of a Pig” was a nonfiction prototype for Charlotte’s Web.
Rebecca West
West’s reporting on her travels through the Balkans, published in The Atlantic in 1941, was compiled in the book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
Charles Dickens
One of the most popular writers of his time, Dickens was the author of works including A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities.
Anna Deavere Smith
Smith is an Atlantic contributing writer, a playwright, and an actor.
W. H. Auden
Auden published his first poem for The Atlantic in 1939, the year he emigrated from England to the United States.
Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut was the author of 14 novels, as well as numerous short-story collections, plays, and works of nonfiction.

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The Print Edition

Archive

Explore 165 Years of Atlantic Journalism

The Atlantic Writers Project

Browse By Issue

Editor’s Picks

One Nation, Slightly Divisible

1491

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Why Women Still Can’t Have It All

The Curious Case of Jesus’s Wife

Discover Atlantic writers

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Virginia Woolf

Rachel L. Carson

E. B. White

Rebecca West

Charles Dickens

Anna Deavere Smith

W. H. Auden

Kurt Vonnegut