Shakespeare: One of the First and Greatest Psychologists
Steven Pinker finds insight into the frailty of human nature within Measure for Measure.
By Heart
Authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature.
Great Writing Is Humble
Peter Stamm, author of All Days Are Night, says his work became deeper once he shed some delusions of grandeur.
The Hidden Labor Behind Food: How to 'Read' a Tomato
The creator of a new documentary outlines how closely farmworkers' lives are connected to what's on grocery-store shelves
Artists Must Be Delusional
American Interior author and rock musician Gruff Rhys learned a lot by following in footsteps of a gullible pioneer.
Write to Transcend Space and Time
Reading Lolita in Tehran author Azar Nafisi says the best books are "republics of imagination" erasing national and historic boundaries.
The First Sentence Is a Handshake
According to science fiction writer William Gibson, a book's opening should be an inviting enigma to the reader—and a motivational benchmark for the writer.
The Joy of the Memorized Poem
A panicked moment reciting William Butler Yeats in an MRI convinced the former poet laureate Billy Collins that oration is poetry's last, most enlightened defense.
'Realism Is a Figure of Speech'
Ernest Hemingway's matter-of-fact style taught author Vikram Chandra to find sublime in the ordinary, and depth in deceptively flat prose.
'Writing Is an Exercise in Freedom'
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley looks to Our Mutual Friend for inspiration on how to harness the spontaneous, liberating energy that comes from writing imagery.
A 50-Year Protest for Good Writing
A crisis of quality in literary criticism led Robert Silvers to found The New York Review of Books—and he believes the crisis continues today, online.