by The Editors
January 27, 2025
We are a quarter of the way through the new century, and the state of high culture is not what it should be. Individuals are no less brilliant, but there is a clear institutional lack. It’s as if the great publishers, film producers, and record labels can no longer provide us the artistic nourishment that…
by Jason Baker
August 2, 2026
Between her forefinger and thumb / my grandmother holds a needle threader— / a loop of wire on a tin coin / stamped with a lady’s cameo / so thin it must be valuable, the way / a dime is worth more than a nickel / She’d smudge her things with nail polish / to…
by Sam Jennings
July 29, 2026
There is a scene, early in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 masterpiece Le Mépris, that surely contains the ultimate cinematic statement on Homer’s Odyssey. An American producer has asked the film’s screenwriter protagonist to help rewrite an adaptation of The Odyssey helmed by the great German director Fritz Lang (playing himself, beautifully). The writer comes to meet Lang in the studio…
July 28, 2026
Where to begin? At the end. At the close of The Golden Age, the last novel in his long series of American history, Gore Vidal performs a theatrical trick. The year is 2000. A television crew has come from Rome to Ravello in order to interview Vidal (the writer) alongside Peter Sanford (one of the writer’s…
July 25, 2026
I guess we moved fast. That’s how it happens though, right? Apparently, there are couples out there who started off as friends and then grew together, realized it was something more, something permanent, long-lasting, but I’ve never met them. Still, it must be pretty common. We’re not pandas after all, are we? Stick us together…
by Geoffrey Mak
July 24, 2026
The artists are at a dinner party gossiping about a dead woman. They say it was an overdose. Her mother doubts whether it was a suicide, but the unnamed narrator of Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love (2025) never questions it. Rebecca, a failed actress, had been a fixture in the art scene of Dimes Square, the Lower…
by Derek Neal
July 22, 2026
The short story collection is a difficult and awkward form. It lacks the unity of the novel, and unlike a narrative that stands alone in a literary or cultural magazine, each story seems as if it should somehow be connected to the other stories around it. This, of course, is despite the fact that many…
July 21, 2026
A good New York City summer is filled with music. I sit backstage in the green room, supporting my closest friend as they prepare to go onstage. Another act, a popular young DJ, is being interviewed by the venue’s social media team. He pauses to seek assurance from the crew looking on that there will…
July 19, 2026
Don’t Talk to Me in a Cab / The man driving my Uber / apologizes to me / for being on the phone / as we speed through the Tudor / towers of Forest Hills after / midnight and past / a glowing LaGuardia / Airport and there’s no way / for…
July 17, 2026
Is politics downstream of culture? Not in the publishing industry. This is evident in the recent publication of two books on editing and publishing, Karen Yin’s The Conscious Style Guide (2024) and Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! (2025). The first is a call for editors to advance social justice through equitable language while the second reports from inside…