Books & Literary Life

Literary criticism, author interviews, and book culture from within and beyond Harvard.

Woman with long hair, smiling, wearing a black sweater, in a textured beige background.

For This Poet, AI is a Writing Partner

Sasha Stiles trained a chatbot on her manuscripts. Now, her poems rewrite themselves.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Scroll depicting Commodore Perry’s 1853 invasion of Japan

Speaking Volumes

Glimpsing Harvard’s East Asian language materials collection

by Nell Porter-Brown

A March 1, 1965, civil rights meeting at Selma’s Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church

Getting Close, in Selma

Acting at a moment of conscience

by Drew Gilpin Faust

Illustration of housing outside a central city

State-Sponsored Discrimination

The role of zoing law and housing in making America more unequal—and what to do about it

Ben Purkert headshot

The Men Who Can’t Be Saved

Novelist Ben Purkert’s playfully serious look at masculinity

by Stuart Miller

Historic photo of camping in Yosemite National Park, 1915

Off the Shelf

Recent books on camping outdoors, economic opportunity, the women of NOW, and more

Illustration depicting blueprints of life, from a single cell to a whole human body

Life’s Blueprints

The development of developmental biology

by Jonathan Shaw

Stock photo, caring for patient in hospital bed

“Shotgun” Diagnosis

The virtues of inaction in delivering medical care

Portrait of editors Rebecca Panovka and Kiara Barrow

The New Little Magazines

Keeping literature and long-form journalism alive

by Nancy Walecki

sweeping aerial view of blue sky and Quabbin Reservoir water and mountains

Journey into Quabbin Reservoir’s Hidden Past

Rambling around the Quabbin Reservoir

by Nell Porter-Brown

Grabar's book pictured with Ware Street's parked cars

Not-So-Free Parking

New book discusses how free parking spoiled cities for walkers, drivers, and residents

by Max J. Krupnick