Home Conversations When Dolly Parton Met Lord Byron Angela Dufresne talks to the writer Jennifer Kabat about history paintings, trashing the art world’s binaries, and why Gena Rowlands is her big screen crush. “I get so tired of people being like, ‘My personal narrative!’ I don’t believe I have a personal narrative. In fact, I don’t even think that I’m an individual. – Angela Dufresne read more Jean Baptiste Vérany’s Forgotten Legacy Fiction Buttered Toast She cleaned to stay sane, stitched to stay sharp, and trusted no one—until Colby 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. Fiction Michael’s Marriages “Her smile felt stale. Her tongue was orange. Her favorite soft drink was Fanta.” – Myles Zavelo Essay The Huma Bird Never Lands “I knew I wouldn’t go back to Tehran anymore. There would be no more graveyard visits after landing in Imam Khomeini Airport. Whoever I ended up with would never taste the blood rice colored by cherries.” – Navid Sinaki 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. 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 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.
