Nicole Rudick

Becoming Acquainted with America

From the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, Ben Shahn sent a clear message in his art about individual people and the conditions that oppressed them.

‘A Woman Who Wins’

In her series of historical novels about the life of Saint Hilda of Whitby, Nicola Griffith explores how a woman of modest means became one of the most influential people in seventh-century Britain.

An Orchard for a Dome

In his diaries and paintings, the American artist Charles Burchfield worshipped the natural world. 

Les Enfants Terribles

In Anne Garréta’s novels, her playful forms are the means of exploring and elucidating ideas about gender, consciousness, and memory.

Where Does the Buck Stop?

Hernan Diaz’s new novel, Trust, incites mistrust from the very start, with the reader becoming a detective sorting through different versions of the truth.

Both Sides Now

Shirley Gorelick arrived at her striking, psychologically suggestive portraiture by way of Cubism.

‘I Needed to Stay Approximate’

In Very Cold People, Sarah Manguso captures the bewilderment of childhood in the narrator’s flat observations about situations she doesn’t fully understand, supplemented by feral imaginings.

Her Language and Mine

“Lately, I have written about artists and writers who engage directly with their own biographies.”

Tethered Histories

Mayer’s fabric art and ephemeral installations were both feminist and humanist, linking great spans of time with individual experience.

The Fourth Woman

In her triptych of genre-bending books, Nathalie Léger amends the archive’s gaps by introducing short flights of speculation and imagination into her accounts of real people, allowing them to swell into living figures.

The Art of Bea Nettles

A recent show and monograph bring into focus fifty years of her genre-defying photographic work, which adds up to an extraordinary visual autobiography.

A Witch’s Demons

Pandemic Journal, March 30–April 5

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Danny Lyon in Bernalillo, Andrew McGee in New York, Nicole Rudick in South Orange, and more.

Delighting in Ross Gay

Ross Gay wrote the essays for his The Book of Delights over the period of a year, one each day, for the simple reason that he thought it would be nice to write about delight every day.

A Universe of One’s Own

‘The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women,’ edited by Lisa Yaszek

The Raunchy Brilliance of Julie Doucet

Julie Doucet’s parodic depictions of intense violence are still unsettling; her elastic treatment of sex and gender is still daring; and her open-ended treatment of female identity is still vital.

Dubuffet and Art Brut

For Jean Dubuffet, genuine art was chaotic, unlearned, and driven by “instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.” It was created by those who had no schooling in the arts.