essays

TWO UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS about Mimi Cave’s 2022 horror-romance Fresh: One, the meatball of human flesh, resting heavy and crimson atop a bed of pasta, is mouthwatering. Two, Sebastian Stan, playing an entrepreneur and chef specializing in human flesh, is hotter than...

"Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill," (1628), Pieter Claesz. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.IN THE NETFLIX series Wednesday (2022–), writing is not just a habit—it’s a means of survival. For the titular character, it serves as both a narrative...

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Manhattan. The Fashion District. Wednesday, February 15, 2023. Breaths hang heavy in the winter evening air as the final day of New York Fashion Week draws to a close. The streets buzz with the residual energy of runway shows and after-parties. The...

 What began as unremarkable arrests in the quiet suburbs of Boise, Idaho, quickly escalated into a scandal that gripped the nation. On Halloween night in 1955, three men—Ralph Cooper, Charles Brokaw, and...

SOME WOMEN’S STORIES demand patience. I have learned this over the years through my research on food history and pouring over women’s letters, draft manuscripts, and clipped recipes. And not all of their stories are equally accessible. The papers of the most prominent...

I felt an immediate connection with poet Omar Pimienta when we met at orientation. We were both starting graduate programs at the University of California, San Diego — I was in the MFA program in Writing and he was there for a PhD in Literature. We talked of poetry...

In 2016, a Norwegian writer posted an iconic image from the Vietnam War on Facebook — a photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc naked and screaming, running from an aerial napalm attack that inflicted severe burns down her back. The photo, by AP photographer...

On a recent vacation to Chicago, I spent an afternoon exploring the hip Lincoln Park neighborhood that was my home for the week. I stumbled upon a Warby Parker store and was immediately consumed with trying on every pair of chic, oversized glasses within my reach. In...

“We tend to think that a deeply ingrained system, such as capitalism, can be resisted only by equal and opposite action,” writes Alexandra Kleeman in her Vanity Fair review of one of 2018’s most talked about novels. “But in a culture based upon striving,” she goes on,...

Salvadoran poet Leticia Hernández-Linares steps into the spotlight wearing a striped black-and-white dress with large flowing sleeves, a chunky beaded necklace, and bright red lipstick. With a personality to match her bold outfit, Hernández-Linares rattles her...

Poetry is having a major moment. We seem to turn to it, to need it most when the world’s leaders debase language and thereby thought and action. And yet within the world of poetry, a division exists, an aesthetic line in the sand, between written word and spoken word...

“He’s Mexican,” I told my French mom about my boyfriend.“Oh, does he have a mustache and a sombrero?” she replied, amused.After months spent in Mexico, mostly among the Jewish community, I was taken aback by my mom’s comment. Where did this idea of Mexican identity...