CATEGORIES

The Culture Pages – The Queen of Fractured Fairy Tales

Hlen Oyeyemi writes magical, unsettling novels in which nothing remains fixed. She has lived her life that way, too.

I Am Mangoes … A Sweet Treat at Its Peak

One summer day in the early 2000s, Pennsylvania dentist Bhaskar Savani sat outside the arrivals gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport waiting for his father to emerge.

Anything for You

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, artificial intelligence meets real sacrifice.

Sidewalk Art

The lamentable state of Russia’s roads and sidewalks has long been fertile ground for memes and jokes. Irkutsk artist Ivan Kravchenko decided to turn the problem into an art project. For over two years he has been patching ruts in city sidewalks with colorful ceramic tiles.

Sputnik V: First Place or Long Shot?

The Russian vaccine seems top-notch, but low public trust and a botched rollout remain formidable barriers to returning to normalcy.

the Valley of the Dead

On the Trail of a Russian Movie Star

Food & Drink

Food & Drink

POLAR YOUTH

Misha Smirnov has the day off. There are the traditional eggs for breakfast and the usual darkness out the window.

Russian Chronicles

Russian Chronicles

A People on the Brink

Over the past century, the ancient people known as the Votes has been exiled twice, has seen its language banned, and has faced the threat of having its villages razed. Today, although teetering on the verge of extinction, it holds fast to one of the last rights it enjoys – the right to bear and to say its own name.

A Work in Infinite Progress

For the Wooster Group, theater is a religion and the process is the point. Its latest: a years-in-the-making adaptation of Brecht’s The Mother.

Enchanted New York

A tale of religion in Manhattan in the 19th and 20th centuries

Design Hunting: Rock-Star Journalist Lisa Robinson Has Lived in Her Apartment for 45 Years

She’s kept an archive of the cassette tapes containing hundreds of interviews she’s done in her Upper East Side rental.

Pandemic Pen Pals

Nupur Chaudhury, a public health strategist living in New York City, grew up in the nineties sending letters through the mail. She received weekly aerograms from relatives in India; she corresponded with a pen pal in Texas; her father even took her to admire the post office’s new stamps every month. But as she grew older, Chaudhury says, “E-mail became more popular, and I really put that writing part of me to the side”—that is, until she came across the pen pal exchange Penpalooza on Twitter in August 2020.

Craft Therapy

In her third book, the essay collection girlhood, published by Bloomsbury in March, Melissa Febos transforms scars into meditations on culture and psychology.

A Room of (Almost) My Own

Finding space, and permission, to write

Tom Stoppard's Double Life

For Britain’s leading postwar playwright, virtuosity and uncertainty go hand in hand.

A Forgotten Founder

Prince Hall was a free african american in Boston at a time of revolutionary fervor— and a transformative figure whose story deserves to be reinserted into the tale of America's creation.

We Mourn For All We Do Not Know

The Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives provide a window into our heritage—to stories of suffering but also of love, joy, wonder, and survival. They’re an all-too-rare link to ordinary black lives gone by.

Caroline Shaw is Making Classical Cool

Her innovative work won her a Pulitzer Prize at age 30. She’s collaborated with Kanye and Nas. What does her success mean for the long-suffering genre?

Tenders of the Vine

Visiting Russia’s Nascent Wine Region

Restoring the Future

A Small Town Gets a Makeover

Ascending Anik

Here I stand, on the summit of Anik Mountain, drenched to the bone amid zero visibility, driving rain, and a fierce wind.

A Time for Pirogi

Food & Drink

Finding St. Nicholas

To the undiscerning eye, the Turkish city of Demre is not much to look at, let alone stop for. Rows upon rows of greenhouses covered in clear plastic sheeting cover nearly every plot of land. The drab outpost in southwestern Anatolia lacks the luxuriant resorts and Turquoise Coast panache of such places as Bodrum, Marmaris, and Antalya, the latter a renowned haven for Russian vacationers.

A Stove Called Yerofeyich

Auntie Nina even pinched herself in the side, but no – it wasn’t a dream.

The Making of a Model Minority

Indian Americans rarely stop to ask why our entrance into American society has been so rapid—or to consider what we have in common with other nonwhite Americans.

The Second Career of Martellus Bennett

The former NFL tight end writes the kind of children’s books he would have loved as a kid.

A Life in Poetry

Our sixteenth annual look at debut poets

Akbar Edits Poetry of the Nation

In September the Nation, a bastion of progressive journalism since 1865, welcomed Kaveh Akbar as its newest poetry editor, succeeding Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith.