essays

Meghan Daum reads two excerpts from her essay collection The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, forthcoming in November from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  From the Introduction For more than twenty years now I have been making something of...

Melissa Broder reads an excerpt from her essay collection, So Sad Today, published in March by Grand Central Publishing.I Want To Be a Whole Person But Really ThinI am an eater of numbers. I prefer packaged foods, foods with a bar code, because they...

Chloe Caldwell reads an excerpt from “Hungry Ghost,” included in her new essay collection, I’ll Tell You in Person, published in October by Emily Books.

Peter Orner reads “Upper Moose Lake, 1990,” from his new essay collection, Am I Alone Here?, published in November by Catapult.   Upper Moose Lake, 1990 I’m twenty-two, I’m drunk, I’m in a canoe. The Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota: Midwestern...

Aaron Gilbreath reads from the title essay of his new collection, Everything We Don't Know, published in November by Curbside Splendor. Everything We Don't Know On Friday March 23, 2012, a year after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, a Canadian...

Melissa Febos reads from her new essay collection, Abandon Me, published on February 28 by Bloomsbury. Call My Name When I was seven, my sea captain father at sea, my mother a strobing lighthouse of missing, I stood alone in my bedroom, renaming...

Elena Passarello reads from her new essay collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses, published in February by Sarabande Books.   excerpt from War Pigs CHER AMIBy the second day under mortar fire, the 77th Division—or the “Lost Battalion”—was half its...

Mary Gaitskill reads from her new essay collection, Somebody With a Little Hammer, published in April by Pantheon.