I am still amazed to recall that everyone I spoke with while researching James Wright: A Life in Poetry could remember the poet so vividly. His physical presence in the room, his astonishing capacity for reciting poetry and prose from memory, and the...
“Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of the Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes. All the proud fathers are ashamed...
How did the Silver Jews have it? Punk rock died when the first kid said /“punk’s not dead”. This may be true of poetry, too. I die a little, in any case, whenever one of those mid-career In Defense Ofs is pubbed, and wouldn’t...
Sloane Crosley is back, returning to the form that made her a household name in really quite a lot of households. With her newest essay collection Look Alive Out There, she...
In her debut essay collection Things That Helped, Jessica Friedmann navigates her recovery from postpartum depression. The essays weave a memoir that touches on class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as motherhood...
When I was first asked to write on this subject, I imagined discussing what I’ve learned from such poets as Cavafy, Olds, and Bidart, when it comes in particular to the body and desire and where that desire can lead and how to speak...
In classical Chinese paintings, we routinely encounter a phenomenon that is strange and even shocking in terms of Western manners. Alongside the artist's original painting, we find many later additions done by other hands: they are red stamps of different sizes, added by collectors—from...
I was an undergrad, it was my junior year, and a poetry workshop (the teacher was famous and beloved, a darling, and I wanted to be a darling like that (like that? I should say, like her, because she was a person, not an...
Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks When Tonya Harding is twenty years old she’ll become the first female figure skater to land a triple axel in competition, a jump that requires impossible strength to launch the body into the air from a forward position...
August Kleinzahler, our favorite "witty, gritty poet" (Publishers Weekly), penned two original pieces for FSG's National Poetry Month. The poem "Snow Approaching on the Hudson" offers a striking and atmospheric view of New York City. In "Notes on Snow Approaching," Kleinzahler steps back...
Teju Cole says he is "a genius." The New York Times calls him "the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of." Gerald Murnane is a singular writer finally receiving his due attention. Read here his story "Land Deal," from the...
Our favorite time is here again—happy National Poetry Month! We'll be celebrating with thirty days of exclusive features, from essays to videos to poetry excerpts, honoring the great poets who have shaped and challenged our view of the world. In the words of T....
Tessa Fontaine’s astonishing memoir of pushing past fear, The Electric Woman, follows the author on a life-affirming journey of loss and self-discovery—through her time on the road with the last traveling American sideshow...
Whiskey author Bruce Holbert met author Elizabeth McCracken in their Iowa MFA program, where they became close friends. Though their careers have taken vastly different tracks, they have supported each other's work for decades, and...
Developing Stories, a photography series from Work in Progress, invites authors to carry a disposable camera and document whatever compels them—a reading, a walk in the woods, a tour of the writer's hometown. Liska Jacobs, author of Catalina, showcased moments with family in...
Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen said he was ready for the end to come—he just needed a bit more time to put his last book in order. Here, FSG Vice President and Executive Editor Ileene Smith briefs us on...
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake sent a twelve-foot-high tsunami crashing into the coast of northeast Japan, setting off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear plant. Award-winning foreign correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry was there to feel the destabilizing first shakes and...
Jon Pineda's Let's No One Get Hurt is an "achingly beautiful" coming-of-age story following a teenage girl scavenging and squatting on the fringe of the American South (Lauren Groff). Pineda's richly textured depiction of place was inspired in part by his...
In honor of Women’s History Month, we have chosen ten standout essay collections by women we’ve published in the last year. From Marilynne Robinson’s ruminations on modern politics and faith to Durga Chew-Bose’s exploration of creativity and first-generation American identity, these essay collections explore,...