“He Trusted the Author”: Remembering Giancarlo DiTrapano

James Yeh

An Interview with Shane Jones

Alex Higley

Road Trip: CAConrad

Ali Liebegott

Road Trip: Joan Larkin

Ali Liebegott

The 2018 Believer Book Awards

Writing and Idiocy

Aaron Shulman

On Dressing Margaret Cavendish

Danielle Dutton

Go Forth (Vol. 41)

Kristen Evans

Proposals Toward the End of Writing

Tony Tulathimutte

Our Favorite Books from 2015

We’ve compiled votes from our editors, and these thirty are the books we loved most in 2015. Ten are fiction, ten are nonfiction, and ten are reissues. As time marches ...

Parties Without Tears

Dorna Khazeni

Planting Foucault in Juárez

John Washington

GO FORTH (VOL. 40)

“I can’t imagine wanting to fence off the world of fiction into one tiny plot.”

Adrian Van Young

A Novel Without a Head

Kaya Genç

The Pleasure of Following Coincidences

Kate Zambreno

Go Forth (Vol. 39)

Hannah Withers

An Experiment in Anxiety

Andrew Leland

Speak! Ye Cold Hearted Ambitious Men

GO FORTH (VOL. 37)

Valerie Stivers

Go Forth (Vol. 36)

Brandon Hobson

Lucia Berlin: An Influence Chart Lucia Berlin died relatively unknown in 2004. A new book of selected stories, “A Manual for Cleaning Women” being published today by FSG ...

“Getting to Take on That Life Temporarily.”

Kathryn Borel

Subjects That Interest Most People

Amy Feltman

Transcript as Metaphor

Patrick Gaughan

Emily’s First Visit to Marsha’s Summer House

Ghosts on a Landscape

Karolina Waclawiak

Go Forth (Vol. 35)

Brandon Hobson

Go Forth (Vol. 34)

Alice Whitwham

Go Forth (Vol. 33)

Ann DeWitt

Stories of Self (Vol. 2)

Scott F. Parker

“THE EYE, FIRST OF ALL…”

Erik Morse

“IF YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING THAT TERRIFIES YOU, MOST LIKELY YOU’RE DOING THE RIGHT THING.”

Rachel Matlow

“I was spared the exhaustion of searching and seizing.”

“Art as a sacred event.”

Nick Ripatrazone

“I don’t do what you do.”

“The idea of art is where we get our influences.”

Noah Charney

Reading Bhanu Kapil

Reading Bhanu Kapil

Reading Bhanu Kapil

Influenced by

Influenced by

Influenced by

Influenced by

Influenced by

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

Influenced by

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

Influenced by

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work atNewtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began to ...

Influenced by

Influenced by

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

Influenced By

INFLUENCED BY

INFLUENCED BY

INFLUENCED BY

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

One should not try to go over the limit

Influenced By

INFLUENCED BY

How do you win the game of personal branding?

Andrea Longini

INFLUENCED BY

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

Go Forth (Vol. 32)

Jeannie Vanasco

INFLUENCED BY

SEA, STARS, SALT LAKE

INFLUENCED BY

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

INFLUENCED BY

A Survey of Writers on Contemporary Writers Listening to writers read and discuss their work at Newtonville Books, the bookstore my wife and I own outside Boston, I began ...

5×5: Brian Evenson

Hayden Bennett

Multiple Identities

A Turkish Hero of Our Time

Kaya Genç

How Writers Read (Vol. 4)

Elisa Gabbert

How Writers Read (Vol. 3)

Elisa Gabbert

“I am invested in keeping present the forgotten bodies.”

Ratik Asokan

How Writers Read (Vol. 2)

Elisa Gabbert

“Words and utterance and magic and power, all tied into one centuries-old knot.”

Amy Feltman

Kaya Genç on Avi Steinberg on The Book of Mormon

Kaya Genç

How Writers Read (Vol. 1)

Elisa Gabbert

Colette’s Advice Column

“The dirt you’re getting dirty in.”

“Something to be shared.”

Colette’s Advice Column

Life That Is This

Madeleine Watts

“The naming is a political act, the writing is a political act, a revolt against disappearance.”

Noah Charney

Colette’s Advice Column

“We don’t realize what we’re walking on half the time.”

David Leo Rice

An Interview with Karen Russel

“IT WILL KILL YOU, AND IT NEVER KNEW YOUR NAME.” An Interview with Karen Russell About Her Syllabus This is part of a series of conversations with writers who teach, where ...

DISCUSS RULES BEFOREHAND

You Should Really Be Reading This…

Noah Charney

An Interview with David Bezmozgis

Ratik Asokan

Go Forth (Vol. 31)

Nelly Reifler

Various Paradigms

Douglas A. Martin

“Despair strikes me as eminently reasonable and boring.”

Go Forth (Vol. 30)

Brandon Hobson

“ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE POETRY.”

Stephanie Palumbo

Developing the Beauty of the Riddle: Rick Moody Interviews David Ryan

Rick Moody

AWP 2014 Journals

Go Forth (Vol. 29)

Brandon Hobson

“IT’S THE STORY YOU ENTER, NOT THE CHARACTER.” An Interview with Aimee Bender About Her Syllabus  This is part of a series of conversations with writers ...

The Place Makes Everyone a Gambler: Alice Bolin on Joan Didion and Los Angeles

Alice Bolin

Mean Mr. Custer

Fritz Huber

5×5: Brian Evenson

Brian Conn

[gallery] Dear Beloved Believer Reader: We are writing to you with an announcement of a brand new Believer endeavor! This September, classified advertisements are making a ...

5X5: BRIAN EVENSON

“Connected but facing out at life alone, and separated in that aloneness.”

Go Forth (Vol. 28)

Drawing by Josephine Demme Fiction Seminar Ben Marcus Technologies of Heartbreak  This seminar will examine how emotion is attempted and transmitted in fiction, the ...

“A reading list is not my trophy case.” An Interview with Ben Marcus About His Syllabus

Drawing by Jos Demme This is the first in a series of conversations with writers who teach, where we discuss how they develop an idea for a course, generate a syllabus, and ...

Colin Winnette in Conversation with Victoria Chang

The Groove of Routine

The Groove of Routine

The Groove of Routine

Game of Unknowns

“I was a child psychologist’s wet dream.”

Go Forth (Vol. 25)

An Invitation to Join the Human Race

Adıvar: The Name Behind the Crater

“Something Just Beyond Words”

“I would like to live in that year forever.”

Reincarnation in Exile

The Immortal Horizon

A Review of Philip Marlowe

New York: Tonight at 7pm, the New York Review of Books is hosting an appreciation for William Gass’s On Being Blue with Joshua Cohen, Stefanie Sobelle, Albert Mobilio, ...

“I Saw the Devil with His Needlework” Exclusive from Tin House

“How To Catch A Fly In A Dark Room”

On Being Blue

“Stick your name on it and let it be read.”

The Soundproof Room: An Exclusive Essay from Tin House Magazine

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Michael Robbins, author of Alien vs. ...

The Case of S., or, the Metatextual Pleasure of Ergodic Works

BELIEVER AND TIN HOUSE—DUAL SUBSCRIPTION DEAL $65 gets you a year’s subscription to both The Believer and our beloved West Coast literary sibling, Tin House. Think about ...

Go Forth (Vol. 22)

Food Faces: Jesse Ball

STRAND + THE BELIEVER: A NIGHT OF CONFIDENCE… On Thursday, March 6th, Strand Books + The Believer will host an evening with music icon Laurie Anderson & writer and ...

It’s just disappeared, the whole culture of reading

The Pressure Cooker as Transcendence

Two Years Ago I Was Asked to Teach in an MFA

Two years ago I was asked to teach in an MFA program. The offer was immediately rescinded when I told the college I didn’t have an MFA. Still, I started jotting down books I ...

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Dorothea Lasky, most recently the author ...

Mortify Your Curiosity: More with Anne Enright

An Interview with Anne Enright

This Black Ribbon

More of Rebecca Fishow’s notes from Insights on Writing with George Saunders. See the others

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Eileen Myles’s annotated road ...

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Noah Eli Gordon, most recently the author of ...

*This promotion has ended, but all new subscriptions and subscription renewals will continue to receive Judy Blume and Lena Dunham in Conversation through the end of the ...

Some Instructions

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Troy Jollimore. His most recent collection ...

The Reader Does Not Give a Shit About You

[gallery] Insights on Writing with George Saunders In his semester-long class, George Saunders teaches a number of the great classic Russian short story writers. Tolstoy, ...

“My discoveries weren’t any more extensive or alarming than most people’s. I just chose to look.”

An Interview with Illustrator Matt Kish

Hackable Book References and the Madwomen in Our Attics

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Norman Dubie, most recently the author ...

True Lovers are as Rare as True Rebels

The Sharing Experiment: Brooklyn’s Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Victoria Chang, most recently the author of ...

An Interview with Davy Rothbart

Bathroom Libraries: In which people talk about the book or books currently in their bathroom

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Kazim Ali, most recently the author of Sky ...

Go Forth (Vol. 16)

“We don’t have to own all the marbles.”

IF HE HOLLERS LET HIM GO

The October issue has arrived!  Featuring essays on Dave Chapelle’s return to Ohio, St. Louis in 1875, the films of Oscar Michaeux, interviews with Michael Jackson ...

[gallery] Poets’ Bookshelves. An ongoing series of posts documenting some of the books collected by our favorite poets. This week: Amy Gerstler, author of Dearest ...

William Gass painted on by Philip Guston, 1969. THE BELIEVER: I read an interview you did in 1979 in which you made a compelling comment about the split between literature ...

Waiting For Leonard

BREAKING BAD AND THE PRECARIOUS PLEASURES OF GOOD TV