“I knew I would need to be my own safety net”: Alissa Wilkinson on her career as a movie critic and author July 2, 2026 It’s often challenging, when writing about larger-than-life figures, to offer an unexplored take on their history due to the volumes upon volumes that have already been written about them. Yet with her latest book, Alissa has accomplished precisely that with her fresh perspective on the life and work of Joan… Read More »“I knew I would need to be my own safety net”: Alissa Wilkinson on her career as a movie critic and author

“I didn’t figure it out till I was 40”: Candice Wuehle on her career as a novelist and cultural critic June 18, 2026

“I decided to upend my very stable life”: Allison T. Butler on her career as an author and lecturer June 4, 2026 With her latest book, Allison offers a rigorously researched and highly readable account of how women throughout history have been simultaneously centered and yet silenced in pop culture. She revisits the distorted narratives that took shape around the lives of women like Britney Spears, Anita Hill, and Sinead O’Connor to highlight the ways… Read More »“I decided to upend my very stable life”: Allison T. Butler on her career as an author and lecturer

“I never intended to publish it”: Claire Jia on her career as a novelist and screenwriter May 21, 2026

“I would memorize paragraphs in my head”: Sara Nović on her career as an author and instructor May 7, 2026 “My hearing loss was not cinematic—no hit to the head rendered my world silent. Mine was slow, uneven, deceptive as a switchback trail. One day, I lost the wind. Then the drip of a leaky faucet. Then whispers.” So begins Sara’s latest book, the memoir Mother Tongue, in which she retraces her path out of… Read More »“I would memorize paragraphs in my head”: Sara Nović on her career as an author and instructor

“ I think whole is always better than good”: Savala Nolan on her career as an essayist and professor April 23, 2026

“I’ve realized I need chaos and randomness”: Anna Lena Feunekes on her career as an illustrator and author April 9, 2026 I still remember how captivated I was by the richness of Anna Lena’s illustration style the first time I encountered her work. In ways that will come as no surprise to anyone who’s familiar with her multi-hyphenate status—e.g., as an illustrator, who is publishing books, who has been trained as a designer—she brings such… Read More »“I’ve realized I need chaos and randomness”: Anna Lena Feunekes on her career as an illustrator and author

“I had to figure out how to get through”: Victoria Redel on her career as a novelist, poet, and professor March 26, 2026

“I knew I wanted to build my life around that”: Melissa Febos on her career as a writer and professor March 12, 2026 Few writers possess the ability to command an avid readership for their every new release. Melissa is one of them. All five of her books have been both critically acclaimed and impossible to put down. If you’ve been a longtime reader of her work, you’ll know that there’s just something about her… Read More »“I knew I wanted to build my life around that”: Melissa Febos on her career as a writer and professor

“I became a person who took those kind of risks”: Alia Hanna Habib on her career as a literary agent and an author February 26, 2026