"The process of letting go of things you don’t need—that's a pilgrimage." The post The Practice of Paying Attention: The Millions Interviews Beebe Bahrami appeared first on The Millions.

Our list's true newcomers are Matt Bell and Sequoia Nagamatsu, who join in the sixth and tenth positions for 'Refuse to Be Done' and 'How High We Go in the Dark,' respectively. The post The Millions Top Ten: April 2022 appeared first on The Millions.

"I believe the work I do both in fiction and nonfiction is to make the experiences of Asian Americans legible." The post I Write to Find Out: The Millions Interviews Marie Myung-Ok Lee appeared first on The Millions.

The world is vast and I'm unsure of how it works, but this comic is mine, and that's enough. The post Origin Stories: On the Value of Comics appeared first on The Millions.

Few things in fictional narrative more powerfully create a sense of realism than the reappearance of certain objects and people. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Mrs. Silly” appeared first on The Millions.

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

"During the raid, my editor’s voice came to me. I disappeared. I was very calm. I didn’t fight back. I became a reporter." The post In Case I Didn’t Survive: The Millions Interviews Devi Laskar appeared first on The Millions.

Are you content to engage in that most vile sin of this age—privileged disengagement—because the unprovoked atrocities being committed in Ukraine by Russians are too much to deal with? Then we are on different teams. The post Psalm 139 appeared first

"I come to fiction to suspend my disbelief. The book is a drug. I'm trying to take this drug. Get melted off this drug." The post Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri appeared first on The Millions.

"It is remarkable to me that I can be a changed person on the other side of one single poem. I have experienced something and now I am different." The post The Hurting Kind: The Millions Interviews Ada Limón appeared first on The Millions.

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Bud Smith, Jacqueline Harpman, Mark Haber, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Smith, Harpman, Haber, and More appeared first on The Millions.

It is the central job of fiction to tell how things come about, especially unlikely things like an otherwise sane man becoming sexually obsessed with the memory of a dead schoolgirl. The post The William Trevor Reader: “The Death of Peggy Meehan” app

I realized that all words, even those contained in secular literature, have the potential to become prayers. The post Prayer Consists of Attention: On Reading as a Spiritual Practice appeared first on The Millions.

"Him will I drag through life's wild waste, /Through scenes of vapid dullness," Mephistopheles says, and it might describe the experience of endlessly perusing Twitter, anesthetizing yourself as you doom scroll. The post Mephistopheles in the Anthrop

"Obviously, there are real risks to writing about the disenfranchised from a position of privilege.... So if I get anything wrong, I’ll deserve whatever criticism comes my way." The post Telling Secrets: The Millions Interviews Steve Almond appeared

The project of the book—to make literary the body horror and psychological turmoil that are part of so many women’s lives—is an exciting one that, in the hands of a more inquisitive writer, could be culture-shifting. The post The Punctuation of Life:

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Hernan Diaz, Isabel Cañas, Michelle Hart, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Diaz, Cañas, Hart, and More appeared first on The Millions.

Anyone who wades into the murk of adult matrimony and its attendant material concerns gets what’s coming to them: infidelity, brutality, misery—disillusionment, at the very least. The post The William Trevor Reader: “Angels at the Ritz” appeared firs

May brings new books from our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Elif Batuman, Caio Fernando Abreu, and Hernan Diaz—just to name a few. The post May Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

The fiscal drama is not the point; 'Hello, Bookstore' is neither a Covid movie nor a cliffhanger about The Bookstore’s fate. The film is about doing what you love and loving the people you do it for. The post The Profound Impacts of Decency: On ‘Hell

'City on Fire' is good, old-fashioned American pulp fiction – intelligent, well-written pulp, even – but pulp nonetheless. The post Don Winslow’s ‘City on Fire’: Good, Old-Fashioned American Pulp appeared first on The Millions.

How many college writing courses are built around a book of poetry? What might that open up for students in terms of lessons on reading? What might it teach them about language and its uses? The post Proper Poetical Education appeared first on The Mi

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Vaishnavi Patel, Janelle Brown, Lara Williams, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Patel, Brown, Williams, and More appeared first on The Million

I count this story as the fourth stone-cold masterpiece we’ve encountered so far. The post The William Trevor Reader: “In Isfahan” appeared first on The Millions.

That Tokarczuk's Nobel nomination was rumored to be greatly based on the accomplishments of this book has only magnified the anticipation. And now, it is here. The post The Maybe-Messiah and His Grandmother’s Ghost: On Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘The Books of

At Write or Die Tribe, Jenny Tinghui Zhang discusses her debut novel, Four Treasures in the Sky, and shares advice for emerging writers trying to finish their books. “Don’t get distracted by the progress of others and that’s a roundabout way of sayin

I think of this as a new literary form, a type of novelistic prose poem, a hybrid, a chimera, whose main currency is delight, wonder, and mystery. The post Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels appeared first on The Millions.

No couple ever recovered from infidelity by only reading books, even the books written for that purpose. But books are what kept me from falling apart. The post Distancing: On the Writers Who Saved My Marriage appeared first on The Millions.

There is no “Frenemies” section in the greeting card aisle at CVS. But here are 10 novels that can maybe make us feel a bit more understood. The post Ten Essential Fictional Frenemies appeared first on The Millions.

I found “The Distant Past” to be an elegant introduction to The Troubles in Trevor’s work. It’s a simple idea, rendered with poignant acuity: the past seems distant, until it isn’t. The post The William Trevor Reader: “The Distant Past” appeared firs