Jennifer Wilson

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Jennifer Wilson

Before I became a journalist, I got a Ph.D. in Russian literature. I don’t miss academia, but I do miss my Moscow “field work”: gypsy cabs, Georgian wine, politically subversive theatre, cosmonaut sleeping pills, flirting with “the enemy,” etc. The thing I loved most about living in a foreign country was how much quieter my mind became. I had to mute my internal English monologue so that Russian could find a way in.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Jennifer Wilson

In the late nineties, a movie came out about a slick-talking, hot-shot developer who is about to destroy a small but cherished neighborhood institution when he reads the letters of a woman who’s trying to save it and falls in love with her. I’m not talking about “You’ve Got Mail,” Nora Ephron’s classic ode to indie bookstores and Upper West Side quaintness.

Jan 13, 2025 | newyorker.com | Jennifer Wilson

It was below freezing the other Friday morning, in Long Island City, when the author Jhumpa Lahiri walked into a nondescript brick building beneath the Queens Boulevard overpass. She was wearing a long white wool coat and maroon suède boots. “That’s her!” someone said, springing up from a bench. As Lahiri took off her coat, she was given a nametag that read “BookOps” over the logo of the New York Public Library.

Dec 15, 2024 | newyorker.com | Jennifer Wilson

At the top of the pile would be “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” by the Japanese author Marie Kondo, published in English in 2014. Her method evoked the Shinto principle that objects can be inhabited by a kami, a spirit. Socks, for instance, should not be folded into balls. “Do you really think they can get any rest like that?” she asked.

Dec 14, 2024 | goodmenproject.com | Jennifer Wilson

Three and a quarter jobs. That’s how many jobs I’ve had for months. What’s a quarter of a job? It’s when you try to quit a job and they ask you to stay on as a freelancer. See, I lost my job a few months ago. And because unemployment is garbage and I don’t have a spouse, I have to work multiple jobs to stay afloat. On top of that, I could only get contract jobs. Not knowing when the next gig would come along, I juggled them all. At my peak, I had 4 jobs. Four full-time jobs.