Readings Archives

Mortal Coils

by Cutter Wood,

From Earthly Materials, which will be published this month by Mariner Books. Assuming 128 grams a day and a lifetime in the vicinity of seventy-five years, you’ll leave behind around…

Heavens? No

by Deborah Eisenberg,

From Issue 11 of Deadlines and Divine Distractions, which was published in December. Dearest (If I may): Do (and here I’m charitably speculating that my previous letters have for some…

Home Front

From interviews given to a researcher by six Ukrainian women in May and June of last year and provided to Harper’s Magazine. The researcher’s identity has been withheld to protect…

Poetic License

by Walter Benjamin,

From “Notes on Baudelaire’s Parisian Tableaux,” which was published for the first time in English in the Fall 2024 issue of October. Translated from the French by Michael Krimper. Baudelaire…

Eye of Death

by Ariana Reines,

From The Rose, which will be published this month by Graywolf Press. Me & Amanda went to see David Blaine the night of the Scorpio Eclipse. He held his breath…

Plates of Fruit, Cut and Peeled

by David Seung,

From Silkworm’s Pansori, which was published last month by The Song Cave. Persimmons on a leafless tree: unlaid eggs in a butchered hen. The old woman picks from the sagging…

Cocktail Hour

by Nell Zink,

From Sister Europe, which was published last month by Knopf. Demian was among the first guests to arrive, taking a taxi. He had intended to get through the evening by…

Live and Learn

by W. G. Sebald,

From Silent Catastrophes, which was published last month by Random House. Translated from the German by Jo Catling. Few have reflected as thoroughly as Elias Canetti upon the fateful processes…

Speech Pathology

by Maggie Nelson,

From Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, by Maggie Nelson, which will be published this month by Wave Books. In speech therapy we played a board game in which…

Something Amis

by Rachel Cusk,

From the introduction to a reissue of Martin Amis’s novel London Fields, which was published in November by Vintage, in Britain. The curse of Englishness is something whose magnitude we…

Dream State

From reports of dreams collected in The Third Reich of Dreams, by Charlotte Beradt, a new translation of which will be published next month by Princeton University Press. Beradt gathered…

Johannes’s Veneer

by Kristian Vistrup Madsen,

From a lecture delivered last year by Kristian Vistrup Madsen at the University of Applied Arts, in Vienna. There’s nobody like Vermeer. Or is there? His modest known output of…

Early Modern Love

From “I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer”: Letters on Love and Marriage from the World’s First Personal Advice Column, edited by Mary Beth Norton, which will be published next month…

Not Against the Rules

by Mónica de la Torre,

From Pause the Document, which will be published this month by Nightboat Books. It hailed golf balls back in June. Notebook got nicked, got soaked. What month is it. She…

The Simple Life

by Jenny Erpenbeck,

From Things That Disappear, which will be published in the fall by New Directions. Translated from the German by Kurt Beals. The great advantage of an outhouse is that you…

Is This Real?

by Laila Lalami,

From The Dream Hotel, which will be published this month by Pantheon. Morning light silvers the glass-brick windows of the Safe-X library. A sign taped to the wall above the…

Gaza … Gaza

by Nasser Rabah,

From Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, which will be published next month by City Lights. Translated from the Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, and Khaled al-Hilli. The gifts…

Hope Springs Paternal

by Julie Buntin,

From “I Was So Hopeful for You,” collected in the anthology What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, which will be published in May by Simon & Schuster. Before…

The Firepower of Christ

From messages that have been displayed by churches in the United States since 2017. This is not a gun-free zone We say it again: we are not a gun free…

Scott

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,

From F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered, which will be published this month by Camden House. I did protest against traipsing across Carolina to see Scott. I felt a sense of ignominy…

Drug Bust

From a case file compiled by the Dongemond Police in the Netherlands. This photograph documents a garden gnome owned by a drug dealer. The four-and-a-half-pound lawn ornament was later discovered…

Talking Horse

by Ali Smith,

From Gliff, which will be published this month by Pantheon. How do you say hello to a horse? I said. I’ll show you, my sister said. We were standing in…

There Are More Ways to Show Devotion

by Hanif Abdurraqib,

From I’m Always Looking Up and You’re Jumping, which will be published next year by Random House. At the end of my young boy’s gold rope there was a…

Love Bombing

From a recent advertisement reportedly made by the U.S. Central Command that appeared on the dating app Tinder in Lebanon. The full advertisement reads: “Do not take up arms against the…

Energy of Delusion

by Andrea Barrett,

From Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact and Fiction, which will be published next month by W. W. Norton and Company. Waste seemed like all I knew when I was…

Works of Scale

by Alexis Wright,

From “Dream Geographies,” an essay about the writing of her novel Praiseworthy that was published in September in the literary journal HEAT. The notebooks show their age through their use…

Fur and Trembling

From 9-1-1 calls made in September by Patricia Upton, a resident of Kitsap County, Washington. operator: 9-1-1, what are you reporting? patricia upton: Yes, I need a officer to come…

Second Opinions

From comments that the British public submitted to the National Health Service in response to a call for suggestions on ways to improve its care. Tax the rich. Establish drop-in…

Trivial Pursuits

From scientific findings awarded Ig Nobel Prizes since 2014. Fake medicine that causes painful side effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side effects.…

A Three-Hour Tour

by Mark Richard,

From a reading delivered in November in Richmond, Virginia. We began to figure it out on day eleven or twelve of the seven-day trip, the slate and obsidian waves rolling…

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