Essays

Scans of his original submissions to VQR, including “The Gift Outright,” “Acquainted with the Night,” and nine more.

Combating the myth of urban loneliness.

Literary magazines ranked by their Pushcart Prizes winnings.

Here’s one for you: “Karl Rove.”

Writers find a way to challenge and chronicle the consciences of their nations.

The ethics of newborn screening.

Should authors get down in the mud with their detractors?

The new grammar of Bond.

Near the end of her life when she was apparently thinking about doing some autobiographical writing, Lillian Smith told a friend that “to tell the truth I have so many selves that I wonder sometimes how I’d do an autobiography.”

Smiles and politeness, the mollifying oils of Asia, flow as freely in Vietnam as in China, but beneath the civilities, life in Vietnam seems comparatively violent. Instructions on the door of our fancy Saigon hotel, The Rex, after some...