The Way We Love Now: Meir Shalev
When we talk about love, it’s part of an international conspiracy: Writers know something about love that readers do not. The same way rabbis and priests and imams know… More
The Power of the PEN: Antonio Munoz Molina
ListenRight in front of me, on a crowded subway train, a woman is reading Marcel Proust. I have never seen her before, and most likely I will never see… More
The Power of the Pen: Salman Rushdie
A butterfly flaps its wings in India and we feel the breeze on our cheeks in New York. A throat is cleared somewhere in Africa and in California there’s… More
Writing Myth Now
The very first storyteller was, I think, a journalist. He was the man who reported on what was happening “out there.” Through the ages it was he who journeyed… More
Thrown Voices: Richard Howard & Susan Sontag
SUSAN SONTAG: I think of Richard Howard as a very central figure in our culture, maintaining and giving eloquent voice and illustration to standards that are in peril today.… More
Aerial Maneuvers
Calvino's The Baron in the Trees, the book of his I love most, has accompanied me through life as a sort of moral and political manifesto. It may seem… More
Lifetimes Out of Moments
A small boat crowded to the gunnels with journalists met the docking of Gertrude Stein’s steamship in New York. Her name ran like an illuminated rabbit around Times Square.… More
Real People: Dorothy Allison on Steinbeck
You write like a man, I was told. No, I write like a dyke. Except—except sometimes I try to write like John Steinbeck. I try to go from everyday… More
Open Destiny of Life
Let me put it this way: I went to school to poetry—that was where I learned how to write. People learn to write by doing various things. I suppose… More
Sube a Nacer Conmigo
Buenas noches. Thirty years ago, when Pablo Neruda was buried in Santiago’s Cementerio General, I was living just a few miles away from where his body was being lowered… More