Readings

'Stop and See How Much Darkness There Is': An Interview with Iain Reid

Talking with the author of I'm Thinking of Ending Things about the move from memoir to fiction, capturing the anxiety and insecurity of new relationships, and the darkness of Canadian country roads.

The Year in Lifting Weights

I hated myself when I benched 405, agonized over form while squatting 500, and regretted the first 33 years of my life even as I deadlifted 650. I had never lifted heavier or been unhappier.

'We Live with a Legacy of Great Violence and Fear': An Interview with Christy Ann Conlin

Speaking with the author of The Memento about assault narratives, ghost stories and the healing work of fiction. 

The Year in Sports At the End of the World

Fandom allows us to locate some much-needed normalcy without ever accepting the current state of things as normal. 

A User's Guide to Zadie Smith

Whether writing about Brexit or defining the painful and ecstatic parameters of joy, Smith has a near preternatural understanding of the fictions we repeat to ourselves in order to function daily.

The Year in Addition and Subtraction

Throughout my twenties and thirties I made dark jokes about the life expectancy of my breasts.

Lil' Kim and the New Possibility Model

Power broker, sex symbol, and kingpin of the block: reflecting on the rapper, who reconfigured familiar faces into something wholly unfamiliar, 20 years after the release of her debut album.

The Year in Hyphenates

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I realized I’d failed at whiteness. And because I’d spent my childhood working so hard at it, I had failed at Asianness, too.

The Year in Not Dying

 Aging isn’t quite as horrific as I’d feared, but it’s definitely not as fun as staying young. 

Send in the Swans

Fifty years later, Truman Capote's Black and White Ball, called variously the party of the year, the decade, and the century, proves his definitive final creative act.