Author name: Graciela Newman

January 15, 2025, 12:50pm A special collection landed in the Hamptons this week, care of Tom Hanks—the world’s one true pleasure to have in class. As real ones know, Mr. Hanks has long nursed a fetish for typewriters. He spotlit the technology in his debut story collection, Uncommon Type. And recently appeared in a documentary […]

TODAY: In 1812, Lord Byron takes his seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  “And the problem with being less struck, less susceptible—with taking everything less to heart—is that you cannot defend yourself against being struck by what hurts without also parrying what would leave you awestruck or moonstruck or lovestruck.” Jane Zwart on

“Were you uncomfortable?” the photographer Nan Goldin asked from a lectern in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie on a chilly Saturday in late November. Article continues after advertisement “I hope so. We need to feel uncomfortable,” Goldin continued, after pausing to survey the crowd that had packed into Mies van der Rohe’s atrium-like glass-and-steel building for the

One of the habits I have developed without meaning to, without wanting to, is this: I routinely lower the volume on my heart. Which is a different thing from turning down the loudness of one’s voice, a practice that is often wise because the world is not short on either noise or bluster. Article continues

Algebra is an Arabic word. To understand its origin, we must go back to the time and place of the Arabian Nights, during the Islamic Golden Age, when the Islamic Empire was transformed into a military and scientific world power. That was the time when Caliph Harun al-Rashid ruled in Baghdad, the capital of the

To be clear, I’m just fine. So many Angelenos are not—thousands have lost their homes, everything in them burned. As of this writing, 24 people have died. I am sitting safely if ashily in the apartment I rent in midcity Los Angeles, with working electricity, my ginger cat, and all the other things that were

On December 4, 2006, I attended an oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., as a newly admitted member of the Supreme Court Bar. It was my first visit to the high court, but I wasn’t a civilian. As a civil rights lawyer and constitutional law professor for more than ten years,

As the young museum attendant diligently unlocked the door I was full of excitement. I was about to meet a superstar—albeit one who had been dead for millions of years. With great reverence and awe I gently stroked her hand with the tip of a finger and felt as though I had made contact with

In my opinion, the only thing that can keep author sane through the surreal highs and soul-destroying lows of a career is the camaraderie and support of your fellow authors. So, like any reasonable person who knows better than to share her real opinions on social media, I have several group chats going with other

The following is from Aria Aber’s Good Girl. Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the US. Her poetry collection, Hard Damage, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and graduate student at USC, and her writing has appeared