O ne night in early 1941, when Harry Crews was five years old, his father nearly killed his mother with a twelve-gauge shotgun. Looking back almost four decades later, Crews didn’t find that fact ...

A person once said to me, “You’re a writer. You must have a lot to say.” He was making an assumption. I’ve thought about his assumption many times. Is it that simple? Do I write because I have a lot ...

I went to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 because I’d won a writing prize, and with that prize came an invitation to a luncheon and awards ceremony. Each honoree was allowed to bring ...

Sign in to access Harper’s Magazine. We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure Sign in to Harper's ...

Sign in to access Harper’s Magazine. We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure Sign in to Harper's ...

Sign in to access Harper’s Magazine. We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure Sign in to Harper's ...

Sign in to access Harper’s Magazine. We've recently updated our website to make signing in easier and more secure Sign in to Harper's ...

When the crow whisperer appeared at the side gate to Adam Florin and Dani Fisher’s house, in Oakland, California, she was dressed head to toe in black, wearing a hoodie, gloves, and a mask. This was a ...

My wife, Heidi, and I put up a string of Christmas lights early in the pandemic. They were LEDs that slowly flashed different colors, hung along a copper wire that stretched above our windows. As 2020 ...

On stupidity and transcendence. In 1943, after being interrogated by Vichy police officers who suspected him (rightly) of conspiring to rescue Jews from the occupying Nazis, a French clergyman named ...

“If you love a place,” a retired ranger who worked at the Grand Canyon once told me, “don’t make it a national park.” On a typical visit to Grand Canyon National Park during the summer, you will first ...

Discussed in this essay: Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time, by Hilary Spurling.Knopf. 480 pages. $35.. T here are about four hundred named characters in A Dance to the Music of Time, a ...