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Doug McLean How Gabriel García Márquez Created a World in a Sentence
The novelist Mary Morris explains how the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude shaped her path as a writer.
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Van Gogh Museum Writing and Alcohol: A Reckoning
In her new book, Leslie Jamison challenges the mythology and the mystique of literary drinking.
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Hulton Archive / Getty / Katie Martin / ... Nikki Giovanni: 'Martin Had Faith in the People'
The day after King’s death, the writer-activist wrote a poem about what his loss meant to a movement. Fifty years later, she discusses how his model of leadership lives on.
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Pavel Gospodinov / Getty The Deft Inventions of The Parking Lot Attendant
Nafkote Tamirat’s debut novel is a highly unusual allegory of alienation and hybrid identity.
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MONTUSE / Dick Iacovello / Penguin Press Behind the Masterpiece: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks at 50
The album was conceived in the milieu of Timothy Leary, recorded with session musicians fresh off commercial-jingle gigs, and only gradually recognized as something like magic.
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Image Comics / Fiona Staples The Sprawling, Empathetic Adventure of Saga
One of the most prestigious comic-book series in print today is an unwieldy, profane, and glorious ode to compassion and equality.
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Bernadett Szabo / Reuters Can Electrically Stimulating Your Brain Make You Too Happy?
When doctors can directly access patients' cerebral reward networks, someone has to decide just how good people should feel.
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Doug McLean Writing a Feminist Novel With a Man's Point of View
The author Tayari Jones explains what Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon taught her about the centrality of male protagonists in stories that explore female suffering.
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© Marcel Dzama / Courtesy David Zwirner, New ... Why a Classic German Children's Tale Is Ripe for Revisiting
A 45-year-old fantasy novel by the author of The Neverending Story is in many ways a fitting companion to A Wrinkle in Time.
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Ludica / Getty The Epistolary Heart of
An American MarriageTayari Jones’s latest novel uses intimate methods of storytelling to depict the dissolution of a relationship.
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W. W. Norton The Forgotten Everyday Origins of ‘Craft’
A new book explores the fascinating medieval history of a word whose current meaning has little to do with skill or labor.
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Jaguar Land Rover / Getty Asymmetry: A Mentorship Tale, With Surprises
Lisa Halliday’s new book inventively tackles a familiar storyline, encouraging real-world identifications in order to subvert them.
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Doug McLean The Necessity of 'Willful Blindness' in Writing
The memoirist Terese Marie Mailhot on how Maggie Nelson’s Bluets taught her to explode the parameters of what a book is supposed to be
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Neville Elder / Corbis / Getty The Tina Brown Diaries
In a memoir about her tenure at the helm of Vanity Fair, the legendary editor deftly crystallizes moments in social history.
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AP Red Clocks Imagines America Without Abortion
A new novel by Leni Zumas is both a compelling speculative work and a deeply considered analysis of what it means to live in a woman’s body.
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Oliver Lang / AFP / Getty The Eerie Horrors of The Perfect Nanny
Leïla Slimani’s novel scrutinizes the paradoxes of parenting in a world where the potential for disaster abounds.
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Ecco Jenny Diski's Curious Women
The Vanishing Princess, the late essayist’s only collection of short stories, is an eloquent take on the rules governing femininity.
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Russell Cheyne / Reuters How Consent Is Modeled in Fiction
Learning from portrayals of sexual encounters, for better and worse
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Doug McLean The Technological Shift Behind the World's First Novel
The author Martin Puchner on the way advances in paper production helped pave the way for The Tale of Genji
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PhotoMediaGroup / Shutterstock / Scholastic / Zak Bickel ... Living Through Death With Harry Potter
Trauma and tragedy play a role in a lot of children’s literature. But it was J.K. Rowling’s series that helped me cope with almost dying.
