Home Conversations The pleasures of identity “In a better world, [Edmund White] would have been a professor in Gay Studies” – Blake Smith and Tae-ho Kim in conversation read more A new book celebrates Russia’s Summer Fix for the Heat and Grime of City Life Feature Her Past Was Stronger than the Pull of Our Present “Just like the man who sells his pocket watch to buy his wife hair combs (only to find she’s cut off her hair and sold it to buy him a watch chain).” – Melisse Gelula Diary Fire Island Pines, Labor Day Weekend, 1979 The Ice Palace at 4:30 AM on a Saturday night should be fossilized, to be discovered in 500 or 1000 years. How will they ever assess our culture, the pure sensation of it? – Philip Gefter Fiction August This man was unbearable, but because he was the first person to be sufficiently violent with me during sex, I let it go on longer than I should. – Anika Jade Levy Conversations What's an Autodidact? Douglas A. Martin and Lauren Elkin speak with Jason McBride about his new book, Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker. Conversations The Wyrd Ones Writer Robert Macfarlane and actor and musician Johnny Flynn on getting Lost in the Cedar Wood Fiction The King In this 1921 story by Isaac Babel, a “king” of gangsters is informed of an imminent police raid as he prepares to host a Jewish wedding feast. Feature An Artist of the Floating World A new exhibition and book pays tribute to Katherine Bradford’s heroic, rueful superwomen. Fiction PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE “Afraid of disappointment, we questioned the romance of Paris.” — Bonny Finberg Fiction Oh, Mom “How could she take pride in a life she was hardly allowed into?” — David McConnell Required Reading Ten Best from the Queen of Crime A Modern Master of Suspense Picks his Ten Favorite Agatha Christie Novels. Essay THE OTHER WOMAN Diana Athill didn’t write memoirs to make you cry. — Ben Shields read more Children’s Author of the Month: Wanda Gag Millions of Cats, the oldest American picture book still in print, was the brainchild of Minnesotan artist Wanda Gag. Although she died young, her legacy survives in her beautifully-illustrated books for children.