Archive • AHS • Buttondown

January 15, 2025

January 15, 2025

Dear reader, Joyland is back. A story of mine, “Vessel,” appeared in it yesterday, alongside stories by G. B. Yuba and Michel Nieva. You can read more about...

November 8, 2024

November 8, 2024

In conversation with Alexander Sammartino for Public Books

October 29, 2024

October 29, 2024

Out today: the fall issue of Bookforum, featuring Brandon Taylor on Sally Rooney, Susan Bernofsky on Olga Tokarczuk, Christian Lorentzen on Tony...

October 18, 2024

October 18, 2024

n+1 launch party

August 27, 2024

August 27, 2024

Van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888 n+1 has launched its fall issue, Inside Job, featuring works by Saidiya Hartman, Raven Leilani, Tom Bubul, and more. I...

On May 3, Bookforum will host a party in celebration of their spring issue, for which I reviewed Justin Taylor’s Reboot. Kay Gabriel, Justin Taylor, and I...

Sorry to have missed you last week. I was hanging out with Alex and Jackson. readying the shop Thank you again to those of you who attended. We had a lot of...

A reminder for friends in the northeast: next Wednesday at 6:30pm, Alexander Sammartino and I will chat about his debut novel, Last Acts, at Grey Matter...

A very short note this week: Fall Books from New Directions, including a new novel, Herscht 07769, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai — a new isolarii, CHARISMATIC...

Two notes: I wrote a very short review of Pablo Larraín’s El Conde for this spring’s issue of The Drift. You can read it here. On March 27, at 6:30pm,...

February 28, 2024

February 28, 2024

Birds-of-paradise in the menagerieA single death is a tragedy, but eggs make omeletsStatistics how he look at war casualtiesKilling is one thing, what sticks...

February 21, 2024

February 21, 2024

Zahra and Murray return for this month’s episode of Sunday Lunch, “Léa Seydoux’s Pout,” on asparagus, the Oscars, and Zahra’s latest album assignment to...

February 14, 2024

February 14, 2024

Also on the rue Laffitte was the confectioner Fouquet where one could console oneself with delicious honey cakes and nut candies and once in a while instead...

February 6, 2024

February 6, 2024

I knew I was running away from everything, but I did not want to plunge a fork into my life and look at it too closely. — Deborah Levy, August Blue Some...

Made of Crows: Fernanda Melchor's Ciphers (IV)

January 31, 2024

On HURRICANE SEASON (cont.)

Made of Crows: Fernanda Melchor's Ciphers (III)

January 24, 2024

On HURRICANE SEASON (cont.)

Made of Crows: Fernanda Melchor's Ciphers (II)

January 17, 2024

On HURRICANE SEASON (cont.)

Made of Crows: Fernanda Melchor's Ciphers (I)

January 10, 2024

In the second year of the MFA program at Syracuse University—mine fell during the spring of 2022—students are asked to write an extended “craft essay” on a...

What my friends and I read in 2023

January 1, 2024

If you’re reading this entry as an email, it may be cut short. Read it in full here. Movies—after Angelo—are my main squeeze. If you’re the same about [‘60s...

December 9, 2023

A brief note in celebration of my friend, the writer and critic S. C. Cornell, who is on a roll. Today her review of the Argentinian writer Sara Gallardo’s...

Imaginary bookstore

October 12, 2023

September 27, 2023

"Customs / Psychological"

A story for The Drift

The Drift - Issue 10 Launch Party

Wednesday, 7/12, 7pm, at Public Records

10 is a great number.

A new issue of The Drift is on its way.

Socrates on the Beach Reading

Saturday, May 6, at 6:30pm, email for address

PARADAIS by Fernanda Melchor

February 3, 2023

This review appeared online in Bookforum last April. I’m following ’s lead in posting it here (“you never know what might happen to abandoned websites”)....

In conversation with Emily Hall

This spring I had the pleasure of chatting with Emily Hall about her debut novel, The Longcut, an excerpt of which I first encountered in the fourth issue of...

In conversation with David Kurnick, Natasha Wimmer, and Nicolás Medina Mora

Dear reader, Today at 4:30 p.m. ET I’ll be joining David Kurnick, Natasha Wimmer, and Nicolás Medina Mora for a conversation about Kurnick’s excellent new...

Yesterday my dear friend S. C. Cornell published a stellar review of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex in the inaugural issue of LIBER: A Feminist Review:...

"(Not) Roberto Bolaño" by Mauro Javier Cárdenas

November 15, 2021

And some recent favorites in criticism

"Friday's Footprint" by Nadine Gordimer

"For herself, she learned to live with her guilt of loving, like some vague, chronic disorder."

"The Swimmer" by John Cheever

"Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?"

"These are pointless questions."

August 21, 2020

Sophia Cornell on Lucia Berlin's "Homing"

"The court wants nothing from you."

Franz Kafka's "Before the Law," as it appears in THE TRIAL

Slicing Your Face Off with a KFC Spork, or A Cemetery Wind

Tao Lin’s "Upset" and “Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money than There Exists”