I Was a Teenage Arsonist - The Rumpus

By Delaney NolanMarch 5, 201314 min read

My school was on fire. It was exhilarating. Fire trucks were whipping their sirens around, and my whole high school was out on the football field,

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Literature & Essays

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“Narrow Escape,” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fiction by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in English for the first time: The police lieutenant appeared to be writing down exactly what Gleb was telling him, but relying upon completely different words.

Aleksandr SolzhenitsynSep 27, 202614 min read

Literary Hub

The True Story of the Actual First Shot Fired in the Civil War

It was the autumn of 1865—a quiet, bitter autumn after four hollowing years of war—when James Gilmore received a manuscript from a ghost. Well, not a ghost exactly. There’d been rumors, of course, about what had become of William Parker.

Cristin O'Keefe AptowiczSep 23, 2026

Literary Hub

Elizabeth Alexander on Finding Life in the Second Spring of Middle Age

If I could have been a dancer, a real dancer, beyond those years at St. Mark’s, I probably would have done it. But my gifts were not that lavish, and my considerable drive was directed toward more than just dance.

Elizabeth AlexanderSep 25, 2026

Public Books

The Treachery of Machine Realism

“The bombed elementary school in Iran appears to have become a target thanks to satellite imaging. In this case, what the image represented — and to who — was a matter of life and death.” The post The Treachery of Machine Realism appeared first on Public Books.

Morgan BarrySep 23, 2026

The Conversation

Australian poetry classics: Les Murray’s The Broad Bean Sermon is inexhaustible food for contemplation

The Broad Bean Sermon, while not his best-known poem, shows why Les Murray is considered by some to be Australia’s preeminent poet.

David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversitySep 24, 2026

The Paris Review

John Berger, Death’s Secretary: A Conversation with Tom Overton

“The first letter I sent to him was about a print that he’d made, which was in the archive—a Chagall-inspired Virgin Mary standing on a donkey.”

Scott SchomburgSep 24, 2026