On Finally Being Seen as a Black Woman Writer
To mark Banned Books Week, which officially kicks off this Sunday, PEN American has commissioned a series of essays engaging with what it means when we silence voices, famous and otherwise....
View ArticleTa-Nehisi Coates Has Given #Black Lives Matter Its Foundational Text
My favorite works of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s haven’t been his opuses—his epic, mammothly researched pieces in The Atlantic that investigate the roots of systemic racism. My favorite pieces have often been...
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How Author Photos Change the Way We Read
It is something of an irony that the most well-known photograph of Virginia Woolf, captured by George Beresford in 1902, was taken well before she had composed her most famous works; in fact, it was...
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The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year: 25 to 16
We continue our year-end countdown of the top 50 literary stories of the year. For 50 through 36, head here; for 35 to 26, click here. 25. The VIDA Count Expands, Shows Slight Improvement In April, the...
View ArticleWhy James Baldwin’s Truth Still Holds Today
The following is excerpted from Democracy in Black. Changing how we see black people in this country involves changing how we see white people. If we believe that white people are valued more than...
View ArticleThe Diminishing Returns of Freelance Magazine Writing
I. A good friend of mine, a colleague—she and I were texting about the magazine-writing world the other day. I was complaining about procrustean word counts and shrinking narrative scope; she was...
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102 Indispensible Works of Literary Criticism
Having recently moved into a new apartment, I have been presented with one of the great toils, but also great joys, of relocation: moving all my goddamn books. It’s a chore, to be certain, one so...
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33 Life-Changing Books in Honor of International Women’s Day
In honor of International Women’s Day, Women’s History Month, and all women everywhere, we asked the all-volunteer staff at VIDA to tell us about the books that changed their lives. Ranging from...
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The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: Post-Lolita Division
Shock and transgression, particularly of the sexual kind, took on new meaning in post-WWII America as a vast, burgeoning middle-class fled to the suburbs in search of comfort and normalcy. Though not a...
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The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing
As March comes to end, and with it the madness of millions of college students (former and current) obsessing over young men in shorts chasing balls, it seems appropriate to present our own tournament,...
View ArticleThe Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: James Baldwin vs. Erica Jong
JAMES BALDWIN vs. ERICA JONG Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (1956) He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big. It was as though he had just discovered that I was an expert on...
View ArticleThe Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: James Baldwin vs. Bram Stoker
JAMES BALDWIN VS. BRAM STOKER Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (1956) He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big. It was as though he had just discovered that I was an expert on...
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The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: Who Will Advance from the Erotic Eight?
For the second round of The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing (the Erotic Eight, obviously), we took our era-specific division winners and crossed them over in an atemporal free-for-all of sexy lit....
View ArticleThe Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: D.H. Lawrence vs. James Baldwin
D.H. LAWRENCE VS. JAMES BALDWIN It’s down to the last four. In this match-up, John Ashbery must choose between the swooning metaphors of D.H. Lawrence and the honest intimacy of James Baldwin. Lady...
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The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: Final Four!
After feverish competition in the round of Sexy Sixteen, followed by the Erotic Eight, the Final Four of *ucking proved to be not so hotly contested. Continue below for judgements from the great John...
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Fatima Bhutto: My Grandfather’s Library, Relic of a Freer Pakistan
In his letters, bound in dark leather and organized according to year and subject, there is a note my grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, wrote to Pakistan’s provincial Chief Ministers who had forwarded...
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The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing: And the Winner Is…
After a grueling week of euphemizing, trash-talking, biologizing, and sexytime literary word-making, The Tournament of Literary Sex Writing is ready to declare a winner. But first, a recap. Round one...
View ArticleThis Violent World: How Literature Helps Us Cope
“It felt like coming on a little secret, like a fairy tale almost,” Ben said. Ben is a friend I met on the day we moved into a co-op on Chicago’s South Side. (“Cute guy,” I thought when I saw him, and...
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Fashion Designer Charles Harbison on the Books that Influence Him
“In the end,” Patti Smith writes in her epigraph about Robert Mapplethorpe in Just Kids, “truth will be found in his work, the corporeal body of the artist. It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it....
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