Kam Reads and Recs

At midcentury, Marianne Moore emerged as a public personage, but not before a painful period of loss. Prefaced by a host of personal disaste

“Bessette captures the familiar nonchalance with which a crowd dissects tragedy,” writes critic Hannah Weber.

A good sex scene needs to do interesting character and relationship work. The six scenes gathered here check all the boxes.

When I finished work on my new book, The Oracle’s Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult, I assumed I wouldn’t read anything more a

Frank Young looks at two recent collections of 50s-era Mad imitators, Panic and Snafu.

I’m not a medievalist but fell in love with one because he seduced me by quoting lines—in Middle English—from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. An

If not for writing, I would not be an artist. Sounds dramatic, but writing is what ended my ten-year stint as a blocked shadow artist. After

Hagai Palevsky provides an in-depth look at a new collection of critical writings and essays by the cartoonist Seth.

One way to understand the dilemma of contemporary American literature in the age of Donald Trump is to see it as an imperial literature. The

Imagine, if you will, a college student returning from summer break for the start of a new semester. Heading to her first class of the day,

When the genocide in Gaza began in 2023, I remember seeing a repeated commentary on social media: every time a queer-presenting person poste

Lord Alfred Douglas’s journey from Hellenism to Catholic mysticism shows how queer Victorians sought meaning and redemption through religion

It’s pride month! What better time to go spelunking in the archive, so as to situate the current moment, or thank an ancestor? I’ve been on