On November 16th, 2014 the seminal performance artist Marina Abramović and Hans Ulrich Obrist, one of the world’s most influential critics and curators, sat down at McNally Jackson Books to celebrate the publication of Obrist’s book, Ways of Curating. They...

When I was told that Isamu Noguchi wanted me to write his biography, I guessed it must be because he liked the section of my biography of Frida Kahlo that described his love affair with her. In an interview he told me that he...

The Pickle Index is being feted far and wide as a multi-platform vision of the future of storytelling. And it is that. But it also, at heart, an old-fashioned fable in the tradition of, say, George Orwell and James...

We are pleased to present an excerpt from The White Road, Edmund de Waal’s enchanting account of a life spent in porcelain and the grip the white clay has on all those who seek to know its secret. De Waal is one of...

Every fake should tell a story. Maybe it’s the blue chalk marks on the back of the frame, partially removed by hand, that suggest previous auction sales. Or maybe it’s the insect frass on the picture itself, evoking decades of neglect in an attic,...

The Tale of Shikanoko is a four-volume epic set in the mythic, medieval Japan of Lian Hearn’s imagination. The first volume, Emperor of the Eight Islands, comes out in the United States on April 26; the remaining volumes will all be published...

I’d been researching a biography of the late art dealer Richard Bellamy (1927–1998) for several years when he popped up in a dream. In waking hours, I tracked the man whom everybody called Dick through the postwar art world, perplexed by his absence from...

Now through July 30, 2017, MCDxFSG is holding a fan art contest to celebrate the release of Jeff VanderMeer's Borne. The contest is limited to two-dimensional interpretations of the shape-shifting, color-changing, mind-boggling biotech Borne. You might find the following passages from the early...

MCDxFSG would like to thank everyone who participated in the Borne Fan Art Contest. The works we received ranged from precocious and comical to stunning and skillful, with the occasional oddment in between. As a group, they captured nearly every iteration of...

The questions of where a story should go can be paralyzing, especially in the beginning, when anything is possible, and especially if you’re not the type of writer to make a plan, which I’m not. To get through this hairy time, I’m likely to...

“There are very, very few people who occupy the ground that Leonard Cohen walks on.” —BONO The Flame is the final work from Leonard Cohen, the revered poet and musician whose fans span generations and whose work is celebrated throughout the world. Featuring poems,...