Our Fall issue is here—featuring interviews with Svetlana Alexievich and Donald Antrim, prose by Sam McKinniss, Scott McClanahan, and Woo Dayoung, poetry by Diane Seuss and Zakaria Mohammed, art by Silke Otto-Knapp and Laura Owens, a cover by Elizabeth Glaessner, and more. Follow the link in our bio to subscribe and read issue no. 257. buff.ly/eEDUJKN

“But everything we think of as real is still always our own fiction. We’re all fiction writers.” —Chris Ware buff.ly/nHWu66M

“I’ve read and continue to read the Bible a lot—partly as a result of being in all those hotel rooms, partly a long-standing habit.” —Margaret Atwood buff.ly/VK8voEE

“Isn’t it a miracle that we’ve ended up as ourselves?” —Hilton Als buff.ly/wGbhNBM

“You should speak out because if you don’t, it’s going to harm you.” —Claudia Rankine buff.ly/plbJYgh

“Most of the losses we face are on paper, a loss of words.” —Wright Morris buff.ly/TUiFEUu

“I would always take notes, but invariably the notes became enhanced. Everything was true, everything was checked, but the facts had a particular hue, a different arrangement.” —Jamaica Kincaid buff.ly/xBOeN1v

“Call it precious and go to hell, I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty rhythm in a sentence.” —Truman Capote buff.ly/E88Pakp

“The movement of the poem should be like a canal, with a volta that surprises the reader.” —Henri Cole buff.ly/VJICsGH

“In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal.” —Margaret Atwood buff.ly/VK8voEE

“The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place.” —Chinua Achebe buff.ly/99MA3Nj

“I said, I’m going to go to the most barbaric place in the United States. So I went to Los Angeles.” —Ishmael Reed buff.ly/uZuaAgQ

“I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them.” —Manuel Puig buff.ly/71nRSkg

“To write about having sex with someone of the same sex, to write about same-sex love and vulnerability—these were very new things in poetry, as far as I could tell.” —Carl Phillips buff.ly/l4bOrPx

“I began seeing my memories with the wisdom of adult hindsight and thinking, Goodness, this could be rather interesting to write about in a completely different way.” —Penelope Lively buff.ly/8hg6qeB

“The new kind of skincare ad that is suddenly appearing every time I swipe through Instagram Reels is a subgenre in a rampant category that I have come to think of as ‘Purification Slop,’ clearly AI-generated marketing content appealing to and visualizing my fantasy that what ails me, including age, can be rendered isolable and extricable from me.” Jean Garnett on “The Uncanny Catharsis of the AI Emomercial.” buff.ly/W03oRIF

This week, we’ve unlocked John Steinbeck’s Art of Fiction interview from the archive. buff.ly/jIDvD5s

“It took me a long time to get hold of anything I could begin to think of as being my own voice.” —Derek Mahon buff.ly/iJcJQyS

We’re hiring interns! Applications for our Spring–Summer internship, which runs from February 9, 2027–August 6, 2027, are open until November 30. Our internship is in-person. Pay is $22/hour, 40 hours/week, with the option to enroll in health insurance. Visit our website to learn more. buff.ly/2XYd3E4

“When people say they’re doing research, I say, You’re just postponing writing.” —Mary Karr buff.ly/jgZG6lf

“The essayist in me was only part of the novelist I’ve finally given myself permission to be.” —Susan Sontag buff.ly/GJaDAvd