Tag: memoir

Why I Chose to Be the Cover Model for My Own Novel

In 2021 a man on an island approached me and asked me if I was trans. When I said yes, he told me “I could barely tell, you’ve become very attractive to men, you must feel like you’ve reached your goal.” Playing with the male gaze seems to be a losing battle. You get judged […]

Entering the ‘Matrix of Language’ With a Crossword Puzzle Fiend

“In a good puzzle, the sense of authorship and personality is there,” said Anna Shechtman. “My favorite crosswords are ones that bear the mark of a specific human voice.”Credit…Benedict Evans/August Anna Shechtman was 15 when she started building crossword puzzles, and 19 when her first puzzle was published in The New York Times. She later […]

Kate Zambreno Takes Issue With What Counts as ‘Literature’

Credit…Rebecca Clarke Men’s personal narratives are dissected; women’s are “dismissed as merely autofiction or memoir,” says the author of “The Light Room: On Art and Care.” Her 2012 “Heroines” has just been reissued. Credit…Rebecca Clarke What books are on your night stand? A bit of a brag, but I just got the Annie Ernaux box […]

In Her New Book, Geraldine DeRuiter Takes on the Patriarchy, but Really All She Wants Is a Decent Meal

Before Geraldine DeRuiter first went viral in 2018 for her essay, “ I Made the Pizza Cinnamon Rolls from Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter ,” she felt well-known food publications never wanted her work. And then, she made the cinnamon rolls. From that moment on, DeRuiter was thrust into the culinary spotlight. She won […]

Ariana Grande Takes Romantic Inventory on “Eternal Sunshine”

Confessional pop music has become freighted over the years by a kind of heightened expectation. Fans see more of pop stars now, in the quasi-candid precincts of social media, which means that fans believe themselves to have an understanding of pop stars, and there is a way in which songs or albums or music videos […]

The Drawers Keep Popping Open: On Sloane Crosley’s “Grief Is for People”

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley “I CAN’T SEEM to find a moment alone with you.” These despairing words appear in a passage close to the end of Sloane Crosley’s latest book, Grief Is for People (2024). The memoir traces the best-selling essayist and novelist’s response to learning that her dear friend Russell Perreault, […]

Leslie Jamison Writes A Different Kind of Love Story In “Splinters”

Leslie Jamison’s new memoir Splinters follows the aftermath of divorce and the awakening of motherhood, but it explores desire more than it does any kind of death. Jamison wants to make meaning, to connect, to love, to feel, to mother, to write, and to revise her life endlessly. There are losses and grief along the […]

Gabriel García Márquez Wanted to Destroy His Last Novel. It’s About to Be Published.

The publication of “Until August” adds an surprising twist to his legacy, and may stir questions about posthumous releases that contradict a writer’s directives. The publication of a last book by Gabriel García Márquez — shown here between his two sons — may raise questions about how literary estates navigate posthumous releases that contradict a […]

A Young Widow Rewrites the Conventional Narrative of Grief

Photo by BBC Creative on Unsplash Amy Lin’s debut memoir, Here After , is a taut, poetic, and intimate exploration of heartbreaking loss, devasting grief, and its unfathomable aftermath. In potent, swift, and artful prose, she details the love, and loss, of her husband, Kurtis, a vibrant human and skillful architect, who died suddenly, and […]

How Zibby Owens Got Back Into Writing After Staying Home With 4 Kids

For a long time, as is often the case with mothers, Zibby Owens’s life was wholly centered on her four children. For more than a decade, the author and host of the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books was a stay-at-home mom. She was still busy — her preferred state of being, she […]