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In an essay for the London Review of Books, Anne Carson writes about Parkinson’s, how it has changed her handwriting, and learning to use concentration and movement to work against the development of tremors. “Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull: the books tell me to pay conscious, continual attention to actions […] 
At the end of this month, n+1 will publish The Intellectual Situation: The Best of n+1’s Second Decade, an anthology featuring contributions to the magazine by Andrea Long Chu, Tobi Haslett, Elizabeth Schambelan, Jesse McCarthy, A. S. Hamrah, Tony Tulathimutte, and more. On the LARB Radio Hour podcast, editors Dayna Tortorici and Mark Krotov discuss […] 
Essayist and editor Lewis Lapham has died at the age of eighty-nine. Lapham was the editor in chief at Harper’s Magazine for almost three decades (1976–1981; 1983–2006) during which he introduced features that remain fixtures of the magazine today: “The Harper’s Index,” “Readings,” and “Annotations.” In 2006 he founded Lapham’s Quarterly with the goal to […] 
In an excerpt from her forthcoming book An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work, Charlotte Shane reflects on what her clients revealed when they talked to her about their wives, and how this information affected Shane’s view of her own role. “My allegiance was forever shifting between the two, the husband and […] 
Hillbilly Elegy author, former venture capitalist, and Ohio senator J. D. Vance is Trump’s running mate. We’re revisiting Frank Guan’s piece in the Feb/March 2018 issue of Bookforum about Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia: “Though the referent of the accusatory ‘you’ in the title is left intentionally vague, it clearly points […] 
Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of the late Canadian writer Alice Munro, has published an account in the Toronto Star revealing the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather, Munro’s late husband Gerald Fremlin. Skinner writes about telling Munro about the abuse, which occurred in 1976, years later only to […] 
The final episode of the Longform Podcast, a conversation with John Jeremiah Sullivan, was posted today. Since the podcast started in 2012, hosts Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, and Evan Ratliff have published 585 conversations with writers, editors, and artists. At Vulture, Longform fans and media critics pick some of the pod’s best episodes. Harper’s Magazine […] 
The Booker Prize–winning novelist Arundhati Roy is facing prosecution under India’s harsh anti-terror laws for comments she made about Kashmir fourteen years ago. The writer Amitav Ghosh wrote on X: “The hounding of Arundhati Roy is absolutely unconscionable. She is a great writer and has the right to her opinion. There should be an international […] 
Literary Hub has published an excerpt from The Uptown Local, Cory Leadbeater’s memoir about the nine years he spent as Joan Didion’s assistant and friend. Leadbeater writes about learning to avoid small talk around Didion and recalls her matter-of-fact way of dealing with problems and giving advice: “We’ve got to get to the bottom of […] 
The summer issue of the Yale Review asks: “What do we need from criticism?” In her editor’s note, Meghan O’Rourke introduces essays by Christine Smallwood, Merve Emre, Namwali Serpell, Teju Cole, and Brian Dillon, among others. In her essay “A Reviewer’s Life,” Bookforum contributor Christine Smallwood argues that criticism is always an autobiographical act: “In […]