Readings

'When You're Writing, Everything is in Retrospect': An Interview with Durga Chew-Bose

The author of Too Much and Not the Mood on restlessness, heritable belongings and interior life. 

Everything I Know I Learned From Vanishing

Apparitions usually appear to one person at a time. If you want to be otherworldly, keep moving.

Dressing Like Ladies

Clothes are an evolving expression of the selves we want the world to see—that’s what makes them so powerful. But, as women, it’s worth asking: who are we wearing them for?

Makeup Is a Language of Resistance

Where I grew up, feminine boys were cautionary tales. I couldn’t explore my identity and remain a model queer boy, a boy who fits in.

'We Need Art to Remind Us of What is At Stake': An Interview with Emily Robbins

The author of A Word for Love on Syria, how we reveal ourselves through language, and love as a place of tension. 

Smurfette's Roots

In her original incarnation, the only female Smurf reminds me of all the assumptions I've had to navigate about my sexuality and sense of self as a Jewish woman.

Once More With Feeling

On the afterlife of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what makes a show resonate for two decades, and why we re-watch television. 

In Search of a New Way to Grieve

From public testimonies of grief to video game dispatches from the funeral industry, the way we think about death is changing. 

Whatever Happened to Virginia Van Upp?

No other producer did for Columbia Pictures what Virginia Van Upp, one of Hollywood's first female executives, did in the 1940s. So why did her influence slowly fade away? 

Meticulous Gloom

 The Victorian supernatural was a transparent manifestation of the period's constant dialogue with death and dying.