The main character of this unique book finds himself obsessing over trees.
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How negotiable is a fact in nonfiction?
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At the last almshouse in the United States, health care is almost unrecognizably hospitable.
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Some tips and humorous insights for reentering the workforce after long-term unemployment
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After growing up in a house of hoarders, a young woman channels her inner neat-freak.
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Telling the truth sounds easy, but social and professional expectations increasingly dictate how honest we can be with one another.
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Mark Phillips tries to understand the fleeting nature of time, looking particularly to his daughter and grandmother for answers. (Don’t miss Grandma’s spot-on response.) Do you belong to the “time has slipped away” camp or the “don’t carpe diem me” camp?...
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An essayist writes the most beautifully vivid description of a pre-seizure aura that we have ever read: “In those weird seconds…everything that was happening, every detail, every sight, sound and smell, seemed to have happened before in the exact same order and sequence. I became intensely aware of things: the trees, the angle of sun, the curvature of the road….”
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While reading “1Q84,” one man realizes how great fiction revitalizes us
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Read this clear-sighted social critique on karaoke culture by Dubravka Ugresic
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Check out this breakdown of US economic relationships and a subsidized market by Thomas M. Kostigen
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An expert describes how to make a sno-cone—safely.
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Censorship is only fun when it’s well-deserved...
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The founder of the first Arabic erotic magazine urges the wider world to rethink their ideas about Arabic feminity...
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William Ian Miller draws on his academic career to pick apart America's mythology around growing old...
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Cynthia Barnett warns of our impending water crisis—and suggests how we might avoid it...
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Revisit five of the best articles that we gleaned from the alternative press this year...
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A not-so-serious tutorial on the art of seductive verse...
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Remembering Harlem, when a sense of community trumped corporate greed...
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When it comes to modern-day correspondence, the mystery is gone...
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Love letters reveal the inner spirit of Norway’s greatest humanitarian...
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A newly debuted online bookstore for men relies on a doofus vision of masculinity (fart jokes, oddball mustaches, and sexy comic women). What literary novels or memoirs do you recommend for real men readers?...
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Avant-garde poet Kenneth Goldsmith’s modest mission in life is to completely uproot our understanding of literature...
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Welcome to the weird world of dictator lit. Originally published in the January-February 2005 issue of Utne Reader...
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Civil War ghosts collide with memories of a high school friend...
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A travel writer tours the Libyan heartland during the Arab Spring...
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Why do our favorite progressive writers flock to corporate publishers? Originally published in the May-June 2005 issue of Utne Reader…
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Passionate love letters between feminist author Brenda Ueland and Norwegian hero explorer Fridtjof Nansen form the heart of Eric Utne’s new book. The private nature of the letters, along with nude photos of Nansen, have set off a scandal in Norway….
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If you’re quick to dismiss The Lizard King as nothing more than “a hokey caricature of male rock stardom” an essay by author Daniel Nester may change your mind. Maybe...
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Peter Toohey's history of melancholy demonstrates that boredom’s roots are primal—and not just existential whining...
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Maya Roads witnesses the history of a people and reveals the determination of Maya descendants to live in and of the rainforest...
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There are plenty of people who wear morbidity and fatalism as an aesthetic pose, but most are mere dabblers when compared to the 1880s literary movement known as decadence…
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Michael Bronski analyzes everything from the construction of U.S. masculinity and white supremacy to shifts in gender roles from 1492 to the present...
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A literary team has collected—and cleared permission to reprint—6,000 of Hemingway’s previously unpublished letters. The first volume reveals an intimate portrait of the writer far more accurate than any biography….
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Poets resist anti-immigration laws with defiance, beauty, and social media...
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Stephanie Barber writes verse in an unexpected, sensuous medium: grass...
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Check out the best zines at this year’s gathering of the underground publishing community...
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Eager to get writing—and willing to be a little daring? History’s most prolific authors provide effectively eccentric tips for curing writer’s block. Think rotten apples and no clothes….
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Male authors outweigh female writers on President Obama’s summer reading list. What terrific books by women do you recommend the president—and all men readers—give a try?...
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One man’s obsessive hobby is to write the world’s longest, most complex palindromes...
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We may not know where the Libyan dictator is hiding or what he’s doing to keep busy, but we sure can imagine...
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A grassroots project to build 2,510 two-foot by two-foot libraries (one more than Andrew Carnegie) promotes community and literacy in equal measure…
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Minnesota publishers take a cue from coffee shops with a new Literary Punch Card...
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Poet Bei Dao complains that modern literature is uninspired—and calls for a new generation of smart readers to reignite the art....
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Journalist Will Potter delves into the social, political, legal, and ethical issues raised by the war on “ecoterrorism”...
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Katherine Cole dispels the alchemy of biodynamic wine growing...
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A new essay collection examines the 9/11 tragedy from a philosophical distance...
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A writer explores how fact and fiction might profitably be collided together...
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The next issue of Longshot is about to go into production, and they need your help...
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Is it possible for an American novelist to write an authentic 9/11 novel?...
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For 23 years, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp family has included the leading seller of the best-selling book in history...
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A 1969 letter from a mother and graduate student to a college friend betrays the dueling roles of homemaker and careerist—and the unguarded intimacy of the epistolary genre.
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Get lost in the stacks of a bookstore on the down low in New York’s Upper East Side…
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Cursive handwriting is at a crossroads, with Indiana canceling it from the state curriculum in favor of keyboarding. But researchers say handwriting stimulates the brain and increases reading ability in a way touch-typing does not.
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Half a century later, can the legacy of Ernest Hemingway escape his suicide?...
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Independent booksellers may begin charging admission for author events. But should they?...
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The Academy of American Poets presents poems for the 4th of July...
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What does it mean when a famous contemporary novelist — often praised for the precision of his prose — makes careless errors in his depiction of the natural world?...
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A literary wunderkind was abandoned and all but forgotten. Then she disappeared...
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A breezy ethnographic study of the players of the game of life, chess...
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Life’s weightiest lessons can be found in a backyard henhouse...
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Walter Mosley's political manifesto recommends revolution to recover from oppression...
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From Homeric mermaids to air-raid warnings to police cars...
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How 1,000-page books trick us into reading them...
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Michael Eric Dyson and Amiri Baraka see a new book by Dr. Manning Marable on the civil rights leader in very different ways...
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A lover of verse indulges his vice while he’s waiting for his wife...
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Staring down death at the obit desk...
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Modern authors bring the bard into the present…
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A homeless man regains his balance along the sidelines...
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The nominees for the Utne Independent Press Award for best writing have a certain way with words…
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Read the latest issue of the University of Minnesota’s annual literary journal, The Ivory Tower...
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An old-school dowser plies his trade...
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A nonprofit works to get independent books into public libraries...
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Amateur naturalist John Himmelman obsesses over an orchestra of crickets and other late-night sounds...
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The godmother of modern midwifery assembles her lifetime of accumulated wisdom into a book...
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Beautiful and Abundant asks the rare yet essential question, What is your positive vision for the future?...
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Not everyone is drinking David Foster Wallace's Kool-Aid...
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A singer writes about getting poetry through her ears…
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Playing Frogger with the king of the Beats...
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Bibliophilic teens are happy teens...
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Today’s books succeed when the reader is entertained—and affirmed...
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A pioneering social critic’s prophetic take on the narcissism pandemic...
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A new fiction category peels back the curtains at the compound...
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Living the good life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be...
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The sad, silent, post-quake fate of Japan’s libraries...
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A spirited defense of one of America’s last great public institutions...
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Akashic Books Founder Johnny Temple says that folks in the publishing world need to stop complaining about people reading less and evolve along with the rest of popular culture...
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As Gulf fishermen are forced to work for the oil company that destroyed their livelihoods, who will train Louisiana’s next generation to fish?...
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A Los Angeles cop writes “just the facts” and still tells one helluva story...
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Shirley Jackson’s controversial short story caused many New Yorker readers to cancel their subscriptions in 1948. Today its cautionary tale of conformity is more relevant than ever…
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A coming-of-age memoir set in war-torn Lebanon...
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Kingdom Under Glass tells the rags-to-riches story of a geeky kid obsessed with taxidermy...
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Library of America turned six old books into epic graphic novels illustrated with Lynd Ward's woodcuts...
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Walking his dog, a man learns to love the simple pleasures...
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A priceless folk medicine promises lifelong virility—and tears apart a town in the high Himalayas...
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A National Book Award–winner pays tribute to a Yale roommate...
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A Brooklyn vegetarian gives grease a chance...
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A grieving mother hangs on for a haunting...
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Who has time or patience to read the latest 7,500-word dispatch from Tajikistan? The answer: you do....
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From her start, celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley has been dismissed as peddling sensational gossip and scandalous lies. Turns out she has more ethical footing than you thought....
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Cyberspace has given the Oxford English Dictionary lots of elbow room, but when is enough more than enough?...
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What we talk about when we talk about work
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Longing for no-nonsense booze in an age of mixology, one traditional drinker harangues snobby bartenders for their ludicrous alcoholic concoctions....
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Lawyers have a formal, long-running tradition of pro bono work—so why not architects?...
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Today’s activists face tough odds. With an endless stream of issues to champion, they also endure comparisons to the glorified movements of the ’60s, leaving many of them paralyzed....
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The title of Mark Slouka’s latest book is cribbed from Thoreau, and the spirit of that old Concord crank is a palpable presence throughout these 12 wide-ranging essays....
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B.H. Fairchild is afflicted with logophilia, a love for language. He writes in the literary journal New Letters about his lifelong affinity for the well-turned phrase …
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I learned my work ethic from watching my mother refuse to quit...
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The acclaimed author published an "unmakeable" book that takes the phrase "reading between the lines" to a whole new level.
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A mother’s brutally honest account of postpartum life.…
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Instructions for visiting a murderer...
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As the publishing world continues to change, more and more of the duties once doled out around publishing house offices land squarely on the shoulders of authors....
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A recovering alcoholic looks back on his complex relationship with a poetry professor, a relationship he remembers as both enlightening and mutually destructive....
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It’s encouraging to read about fisherfolk around the globe who have learned to not take too much from the seas, lest their omega-3-laden riches run out....
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Celebrating Valentine’s Day, using the Internet, and singing folk songs can all be subversive deeds, according to Small Acts of Resistance....
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When J.C. Hallman sets off looking for utopia his quest takes him to such divergent places as a ship that continuously circumnavigates the globe and a community of gun owners....
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Social networking is keeping poets connected....
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A son’s grief drives him to examine every facet of his father’s grisly demise in a motorcycle accident….
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A short history of food writing concludes that you are, in fact, what you eat....
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In an excerpt from his latest book, Half Empty, author David Rakoff skewers the world of online publishing....
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A man journeys to the farthest spot from any McDonald’s in the contiguous United States….
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Author Chris Adrian discusses his new novel “The Great Night.”...
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When you read a Western novel, you know that Stetsons may be involved, and when you read Southern lit you might expect the appearance of a moss-covered mansion. These sorts of expectations can be frustrating for writers …
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Aaron Perlut, chairman of the American Mustache Institute, explains why he fights for the rights of the mustachioed....
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The U.S. Government bought out the entire first printing of Operation Dark Heart, but why?...
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A man grows old in prison and outlives society’s fears...
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Abandoning fear and insecurity for a life stocked with steaks, plums, and beer...
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Authors Marlon James and Dave Eggers have won prizes meant to recognize the power of the written word to promote peace….
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It’s a special day and it comes but once a year. For word-nerds, it beats the heck out of birthdays. It is the day, of course, when the Oxford Press unveils the latest additions to its American dictionary....
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The Chronicle of Higher Education discovers that at least a couple of professors aren’t big fans of Twitter or blogs....
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Some theorists argue that class is the underpinning issue in every American policy discussion. So where are our contemporary, working-class authors?...
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We don’t shape language, language shapes us...
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Thanks to the new book Cycling—Philosophy for Everyone, I now have a term to describe the state of mind I achieve on my daily bicycle commute…
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The 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists include Marlon James, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Dave Eggers, among others....
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With reviews, tips, and features, England's Electric Bike magazine covers the nascent electric bicycle industry....
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A couple of bloggers have fun with photography, writing, and CAPTCHAs (those boxes of obscured alphanumerics designed to verify your sentience as you browse the Internet)....
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The editor of The Rumpus shares a few browsing favorites....
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300 Reviews takes on everything from the gender binary to cats...
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A PEN World Voices event centered around the past, present, and future of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad....
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Natasha Vargas-Cooper recently published a nifty book about the critically adored show Mad Men....
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Advice for writers from the most unexpected of places...
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Don't be shy! Make your affections public...
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A books blogger solicits nominees and picks 15. Who would you vote for?..
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A look at "the books that have provided a richer understanding of the joys and challenges particular to gay life"...
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Rule number one: Do not walk in and ask if it is a library...
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The writer's delightfully cracked weekly dispatch for The Rumpus is one of the best Internet columns you’ll stumble upon....
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Mary E. Laur dissects the particular devotion readers feel for The Chicago Manual of Style as its latest edition rolls out....
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Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt on how he’s trained himself to read more deeply and voluminously….
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A new website allows you to explore your literary genealogy and discover which famous author most closely matches your own writing style...
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The novelist talks about the inspiration of forgotten books...
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This year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has found its winner: the world’s worst opening sentence for an imaginary novel....
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Actor, playwright, and essayist Wallace Shawn talks about his collection of essays and the evolution of his radical politics…
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An interview with Nigerian writer Chris Abani…
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The doyennes of 19th century literature—Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë—reimagined as spectacular action figures...
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Paranoia is a novel about love in time of dictatorship, and two days after it hit the bookshops in Minsk, it disappeared...
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Tears are the highest praise for Lurlene McDaniel’s brand of sick lit...
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Seeking sweet refuge in the earth’s mystery and beauty...
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Maybe the future of the short story has nothing to do with e-readers or online distribution...
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It’s the question most parents dread: Can we crash at your place for a while?
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Novelist Randa Jarrar reflects on the perils of writing about her father....
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David Gates and Jonathan Lethem have a few things to say to one another about writing in the digital age....
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A look at some fascinating techniques employed in the name of gaining perspective…
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After a writer dies, his or her papers can become the crux of protracted legal disputes. Writers should leave better wills....
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Writing in the Nation, John Palatella argues that the so-called “crisis” of book-reviewing isn’t the death knell we might think...
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The Economist reviews a new book about the bloodcurdling history of the island nation...
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In a beautiful personal reminiscence, Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic describes caring for his aging father and discovering that he is not alone...
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The Paris Review, the venerable literary journal, has launched a daily blog...
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UbuWeb Sound has an amazing archive of recorded readings by the great poet John Ashbery, as well as other luminaries...
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Rick Bass marvels at the beauty and sheer exhaustion he experiences while touring the Parisian behemoth….
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A designer collaborates with authors to craft covers and jacket blurbs for books that will never really exist...
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The good people at The Rumpus have come up with a new way of doing the book club, and it's awesome....
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An editor at The Believer ponders the state of book appreciation....
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Michael David Lukas muses on vets from Iraq and Afghanistan writing in the contemporary MFA writing workshop....
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I don't know how it took me this long to bump into the website Five Books. The concept is delightfully simple: experts recommend their favorite five reads in their given fields....
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