letters · The Lead
The Letters of Mavis Gallant to Her Editor
A small archive at the New York Public Library holds Mavis Gallant's working correspondence with her New Yorker editor across thirty-four years. The letters are an education in how a story gets made.
In this issue
An American Non-Fiction from Graywolf
Christopher Ridenour's <em>The Walking Survey</em>, published by Graywolf Press on 2026-06-11, is a 274-page account of one geographer's attempt to walk the Pennsylvania portion of the Mason-Dixon Line in the summer of 2023.
Across the Alphabet: The Politics of Transliteration
How a translator spells a name in English can carry centuries of imperial history. A close look at three writers whose transliterated names have changed in print across a decade.
The Tsundoku Problem: On the Books One Has Not Yet Read
An essay on the unread stack, the small guilt that attends it, and the slow shift in how to think about it.
The Gilead Cycle Finished: A Late Reading of Marilynne Robinson's Four Novels
A return to the four Gilead novels in the spring of 2026, with the question of what the cycle has become now that <em>Jack</em> has settled into its position as the volume that closes it.
From the editor
"Long reviews of small books and small reviews of long ones."
— Marguerite Adler · Editor in chief
A Day at Actes Sud, and the Long Argument About Place
The French publisher's headquarters in Arles operate on a rhythm that the Paris trade has not quite forgiven for forty-eight years.
Olga Tokarczuk's <em>The Empusium</em> in English: A Long Reading
Antonia Lloyd-Jones's translation of Tokarczuk's 2022 novel reaches English in 2026, and the question of what the book attempts in its conversation with Thomas Mann.
The Condolence Letter After the Internet
What happens to the most difficult of all the personal-letter forms when most condolence now happens in a comment thread, a text message, or not at all.
A Marseille Novel in Translation: The Port House
Yacine Halilou's <em>The Port House</em>, translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins for And Other Stories on 2026-06-04, is 286 pages of careful, accumulative work on a single Marseille apartment block between 1972 and 2019.
Virago Modern Classics at Forty-Five: The Green Spine, Considered
Virago Modern Classics, launched by Carmen Callil in 1978, marks forty-eight years of continuous publishing in 2026. Marguerite Adler walks through the green-spine list across four decades and asks what the imprint still has to do.
The Personal Canon: On the Books One Keeps
A piece on the small private list of books any serious reader carries, and on the test by which a book enters it.
The Postcard as a Prose Form
An argument that the postcard, constrained by space and exposed to every reader along the way, has produced some of the most precise prose of the twentieth century.
Deborah Eisenberg's Collected Stories: A Late Reckoning
Picador's 2026 omnibus collects all seven volumes of Deborah Eisenberg's short fiction in one binding, occasion for a sustained reading of one of the strangest careers in American letters.
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The Subscription Shop in Ennistymon
A small bookshop in a north Clare market town, operating on an annual subscription model under which members receive one curated book a month and access to a small lending library, considered as one experimental answer to the economics of rural bookselling.
The Footnote or the Gloss: A Translator's Invisible Decisions
When a foreign word will not behave, the translator can footnote it, gloss it inside the sentence, or trust the reader. Three recent books test all three.
McNally Editions and the Small American Reissue Boom
McNally Editions, the reissue imprint launched in 2021 by the Brooklyn bookseller McNally Jackson, has now published forty-six titles. Devon Cree visits the imprint's editorial office and considers the wider American small-press reissue surge.
Finishing Javier Marías: A Late Reading of the Tomás Nevinson Trilogy
A long reading of Marías's final trilogy, completed and translated after the author's death in 2022, and the question of what the late work tells us about the whole career.
Reading in Translation: Trust, and the Limits of It
An essay on what is required of the reader who reads books written in languages she does not know.
The Letters Rilke Did Not Send
A new edition collects the drafts Rilke wrote and then withheld. The book complicates the figure of the great letter writer in interesting and uncomfortable ways.
A Novel of the Baltic Coast, from Fitzcarraldo
Kazimierz Linde's <em>The Long Strand</em>, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones for Fitzcarraldo Editions on 2026-05-21, runs to 312 pages and crosses ninety years on a single beach. It is patient, sometimes oppressively so.
Behind the Till at Shakespeare and Company
A week working in the rue de la Bûcherie bookshop opposite Notre-Dame, observing the operational realities of a bookshop that has become a literary tourist destination while still functioning as a working bookseller of new and second-hand titles.
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The Sunday note
A short letter every Sunday.
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