The Day I Almost Met Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t the kind of book that one expects to find on college reading lists. Middle…

‘It Hurts Me a Little Bit to Say This…’

A.O. Scott on cultural overload, bad movies, and being the institutional voice of the New York Times

Home Alone, With a Drill and a Bow

Advanced defensive tactics for country living

A few years ago I moved from the heart of San Francisco to a 150-year-old house in a remote part of upstate New York. My personal ad might have read: Single woman…

Expressing Your Opinion in the Digital Age

A single voice among the roar of the crowd

A Tiny House of One’s Own

Submit your essay for the chance to win a week-long writer’s retreat in my Tiny House in Northern California

I Need Somebody to Love… and to Design With

How a design process can bring couples closer together

With Minsky’s Passing, the Passing of a Dream

The pioneers of “strong AI” — the idea that machines have the capacity to one…

The Story of Your Life, from Beginning to End

“How could you live and have no story to tell?” — Dostoevsky

If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ve experienced how your kids quickly developed an insatiable appetite for stories. How many…

Lost and Found in Ka Nyamazane

I usually travel to explore or imagine or forget, but in the winter of 2005 I traveled to remember. I’d published a nonfiction book, grown disenchanted with my day job and suffered personal tragedy. The draft of a novel I’d battled to write had ended up in a folder marked…