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Two Literary Titans Sit Down to Talk

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The novelists Edmund White, who died on 3 June, and John Irving, 82, might not seem an obvious match, but their decades-long friendship is rooted in a shared interest in challenging America’s puritanical attitudes. In one book after another, these literary lions have explored sexuality and identity in ways that challenge readers to examine their […]

Children Die, and Parents Go on Living

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“True compassion takes courage,” writes the prize-winning author Yiyun Li in this excerpt from her astonishing new memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow. Here, she navigates the profound pain of losing her two sons, Vincent and James, to suicide; the inadequacies of language; and the relentless task of continuing to live with unanswerable questions. Children […]

A Note From Gaza

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Translator’s Note: This is a new translation of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s “A Note from Gaza.” Kanafani (1936-1972) wrote the story in 1956 when he was teaching in Kuwait. The last of three such notes—the others are from Ramla and Tira, both located within present-day Israel’s borders—it was published in his 1962 short story collection […]

Squid Games

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In 1851, Jean Baptiste Vérany made a promise remarkable for his time—to show sea creatures vividly alive, supple and shifting, rendered in dazzling chromolithographs. Inspired by a red umbrella squid he found washed onto the pebble beach in his hometown of Nice, he began paying fishermen who could bring him other specimens. In total he […]

“Before I Made Her Famous and the Rot Set In”

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“The good times are middling, the bad times are bad,” wrote Edna O’Brien in the summer of 1958 in one of the journals she kept meticulously throughout her life. Then, in red ink—tight, scolding, almost schoolmasterly—came a furious annotation: “but not her fault. Nothing to do with her adolescent vanity.” The interjection wasn’t hers. It […]

NOT YET

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In this short story by Joanna Hershon, one woman must reckon with her mother’s forgotten past, her own unraveling present, and the ache of watching her son grow up and away.

Buttered Toast

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At the new place (and every place was the new place, until they left, when it became the old place), Sarah was assigned to clean. She did not mind. She preferred to keep her hands busy so her mind would stay quiet. She cleaned at the old place. At a few of the old places. […]

The Huma Bird Never Lands

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Back in Iran for the last time, Navid Sinaki bonds with his cousin, Bahar, but when she decides to emigrate, the cruelty of their differences is laid bare.

Ghosts Again

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One afternoon in early October Elena and Yamioletta were finishing warm forty-ouncers on Rey’s porch when Yamioletta offered to drive Elena around. Elena thought it might be like off-roading in the hills, which she had done with Sam and Chris in high school. They drove across the fields under electrical towers and along the fire […]