From “Burn the Diaries,” an essay in the collection Index Cards, which will be published this month by New Directions. blankness In a volume of interviews, Jean Genet reconstructs the…
From the December 30, 1979, entry in his diary, which was released in May by the George Washington University National Security Archive. Chernyaev, a member of the Central Committee of…
From a journal that Flannery O’Connor (1925–64) kept during her second year at Georgia State College for Women. The journal entries were published in Issue 94 of Image Journal. Regina…
By Anaïs Nin (1903–77), from diary entries written in March 1947 in New York City. Trapeze, an unexpurgated section of Nin’s diaries spanning from 1947 to 1955, was published this…
By Michel Leiris (1901–90), from Nights as Day, Days as Night, a chronicle of the author’s dreams between 1923 and 1961. The book was published last month by Spurl Editions.…
By Christa Wolf (1929–2011), from One Day a Year, a journal that she kept each September 27 from 1960 until her death. The most recent volume will be published next month by…
By Jenny Diski, from her Twitter feed. Diski, a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, was the author of ten novels and eight works of non-fiction, including In Gratitude, a memoir about…
From Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich, edited by Walter Kempowski, out this month from W. W. Norton. On April 25, 1945, Soviet…
From a previously unpublished journal entry by Allen Ginsberg, dated February 18–19, 1965, and collected in The Essential Ginsberg, which will be published next month by Harper Perennial. In 1965, Ginsberg accepted…
By Sarah Manguso, from Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, out in March from Graywolf Press. Manguso is the author of several books, including The Guardians and The Two Kinds…
By Jean Guéhenno, from Diary of the Dark Years, 1940–1944: Collaboration, Resistance, and Daily Life in Occupied Paris, out this month from Oxford University Press. Guéhenno (1890–1978) was a writer,…