creative process

The New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of The Orchid Thief talks with musician Ben Arthur about her music, inspiration, distraction, adaptation, and her new book about the Los Angeles Public Library fire in 1986.

Writing about trauma is sometimes called “navel-gazing,” particularly for women writers. An essayist and memoirist confronts this stigma, and calls on writers to explore their personal traumas and truths.

For the past thirty years, from the publication of his first novel, Mohawk, to his latest, Everybody’s Fool, a sequel to his beloved 1993 novel, Nobody’s Fool, Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize–winning “patron saint of small-town fiction,” has remained the same generous, optimistic, hardworking writer he’s always been, welcoming readers into his books and his heart.

Melissa Febos, Jay Baron Nicorvo, and nine other authors share their stories of the major turning points they experienced.

Visual artist Jonathan Allen and poet Anselm Berrigan team up to create LOADING, an exhibit in New York City that will be published in book form this fall by Brooklyn Arts Press.