Last month, when the fiction finalists for the National Book Awards were announced, one stood out from the rest: “Station Eleven,” by Emily St. John Mandel. While the other nominated books are what, ...

Are you looking to be inspired by a new biography? What about cracking open a heart-racing thriller? There’s always romance, too, if you're in the mood for love. Whether you’re picking another book ...

American prose poetry—a tradition extending from Robert Bly to Lyn Hejinian—has finally come into its own. Although prose poems defy easy classification—they are, as the name indicates, neither ...

At a reading in Manhattan last month, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley faced an unruly crowd as she read from her new book, “Twenty Yawns.” Audience members squirmed and fidgeted, ...