Did This Writer Actually Know Tennessee Williams? James Grissom says that he met the playwright and his famous muses, and quoted them extensively in his work. Not everyone believes him. June 5, 2023 The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far After the Afro-Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo died, his husband learned that almost everything the writer had shared about his life was made up—including his Cuban identity. March 13, 2023 Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation? In his “Slough House” thrillers, the screwups save the day—and there’s a very fine line between comedy and catastrophe. November 28, 2022 Annie Ernaux Turns Memory Into Art Many authors write about their lives. Over nearly fifty years, the Nobel laureate has discovered new ways to do it. November 14, 2022 The Shock and Aftershocks of “The Waste Land” T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece is a hundred years old, but it has never stopped sounding new. September 26, 2022 George Balanchine’s Soviet Reckoning New York City Ballet’s 1962 tour of the U.S.S.R. forced the great choreographer to confront the regime he’d fled and the people he’d left behind. September 5, 2022 Thomas Mann’s Brush with Darkness How the German novelist’s tormented conservative manifesto led to his later modernist masterpieces. January 17, 2022 The Most Ambitious Diary in History Claude Fredericks, a Bennington classics professor, knew Anaïs Nin and James Merrill, and taught Donna Tartt. He kept a journal for eight decades, and persuaded many in his orbit that he was writing a titanic masterpiece. Did he? November 1, 2021 A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Woman The author’s diaries and notebooks chart her early work and love life. September 27, 2021 Who Jason Reynolds Writes His Best-sellers For Through books that center on Black children, the author wants young readers to discover their own stories. August 9, 2021
