Essays

In the early 1820s, the acclaimed Victorian philosopher, social critic, and essayist Thomas Carlyle achieved a level of expertise in German language and literature that prompted editors to seek him out as a reviewer and launched his career as an essayist...

What is a place? A place where things happened, horrible things, the traces of which have been erased? Ukraine, for a long time, has been filled with these ‘inconvenient places’ which embarrass everyone, no matter which side of post-Soviet memorial...

From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet Ross Gay, a fresh new volume of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us.The author of the New York Times...

A unique voice in American fiction, Dagoberto Gilb is also a singular writer of personal and journalistic essays. In A Passing West he casts a penetrating gaze upon the culture and history of the Southwest, Mexican American identity, and his own family...

Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle the big issues embroiling society-state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women's rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of...

A deeply felt and humorous collection examining a year in the wake of extraordinary loss. In November 2010, on the morning after election day, Mirsky lost her three-year-old son, Lev. In the year that followed, she produced a profound and provocatively...

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat's childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We're Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall,...

Over seven decades, John McPhee has set a standard for literary nonfiction. Assaying mountain ranges, bark canoes, experimental aircraft, the Swiss Army, geophysical hot spots, ocean shipping, shad fishing, dissident art in the Soviet Union, and an even...

I am sitting in bed next to Mariah Carey. She’s wearing a pair of tiny boxer shorts and a belly-airing vest. “You can lie down if you want”, she says. “I mean it’s fine, be comfortable, “ so I lean further back into the pillows, feigning being...

At her death in 2020, Eavan Boland left a formidable body of work - poems and prose. Together hey transformed Irish poetry and had a considerable impact throughout the English-speaking world. She was also a major feminist thinker and essayist. She...

Recombinant Theory is a collection of literary essays that challenge how readers interact with and perceive text, context, and critical writing. Working with printed pages and scissors, Joel Katelnikoff applies literal cut-up techniques to the complete...

What should we do with the things we inherit? In ten intimate essays as vivid as fiction and as varied as music, Melora Wolff's Bequeath presents a flawed, funny, impressionable narrator who tries to solve the mysteries of bequeathed artifacts, family...

'This travel book is truly a labyrinth--or, more precisely, a piece of the labyrinth that it has been my fate to wander, from the cradle to the grave.' Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792-93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that...

Fall under the spell of Florida’s natural environmentIn this captivating collection, Florida’s most notable authors, poets, and environmentalists take readers on a journey through the natural wonders of the state. Continuing in the legacy of the beloved...

In On Reflection Richard Holloway thinks back on some of the questions that have shaped his life. Here, then, are the big asks: is there a God? How can we forgive? Where does creativity come from? How can we face loss and death? How can we live a good...

A week-to-view diary, this elegant and practical publication gathers extracts from twenty years of outstanding writing from Irish Pages (the island’s premier literary journal) and The Irish Pages Press (“British Book Award Small Press of the Year 2022,...

First published in 1962, The Faith of an Artist presents assembled personal statements of more than twenty men of creative genius in the present generation- poets, painters, architects and dramatists, novelists, and composers. These are all men of...

Eighty years ago, at the end of a devastating fratricidal war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, completely dependent on the United States for security and development. Today it’s the tenth economy in the world, dynamic and...

In recent years, Naples has been the subject of countless books, films and TV series, making it even more difficult to imagine a Neapolitan normality, if it exists at all. As Naples becomes the most filmed city in Italy, where to look for the ordinary,...

Contributions by Ruth R. Caillouet, Mary C. Carruth, Nancy Dixon, Kathleen Downes, Edward J. Dupuy, Shari Evans, Paul Fess, Carina Evans Hoffpauir, Leslie Petty, Heidi Podlasi-Labrenz, Tierney S. Powell, Shanna M. Salinas, Matthew Teutsch, and Marcus...

Rotten London, Rotten Elsewhere: Letters To Power is a collection of letters written to people in positions of authority and influence between 2008 and 2023. This is Ahmed Olayinka Sule’s first book. Born and raised in London, educated in Nigeria, he now...