The Paris Review

The Paris Review is a quarterly literary magazine published in English that was founded in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its early years, the magazine featured works from notable authors such as Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly. One of its most acclaimed features is the "Writers at Work" series, which includes interviews with famous writers like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Irwin Shaw, Elizabeth Bishop, and Vladimir Nabokov, among many others. This series has been recognized as a significant effort in preserving cultural history. In 1973, The Paris Review relocated its headquarters from Paris to New York City. George Plimpton served as the editor from its inception until he passed away in 2003, and since 2010, Lorin Stein has taken on the role of editor.

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Souvenirs by Sophie Haigney and Olivia Kan-Sperling

1 week ago | theparisreview.org | Sophie Haigney |Olivia Kan-Sperling

By Sophie Haigney and Olivia Kan-Sperling May 1, 2025 Each month, we comb through dozens of soon-to-be-published books, for ideas and good writing for the Review’s site. Often we’re struck by particular paragraphs or sentences from the galleys that stack up on our desks and spill over onto our shelves. We sometimes share them with each other on Slack, and we thought, for a change, that we might share them with you.
Man of the West: Akutagawa’s Tragic Hero

2 weeks ago | theparisreview.org | Geoffrey Mak

By Geoffrey Mak April 28, 2025 On the night of July 24, 1927, Ryunosuke Akutagawa swallowed a lethal amount of Veronal, slipped onto a futon beside his wife, and fell asleep reading the Bible. The writer was thirty-five years old.
On Fish Tales: A Forgotten Erotic Novel of Raw Longing and Fierce Freedom

2 weeks ago | theparisreview.org | Danielle Jackson

By Danielle A. Jackson April 25, 2025 Fish Tales, first published in 1983, is a novel told in short, vivid vignettes. A woman named Lewis comes of age hardscrabble in early sixties Detroit. It was a difficult time to be born a girl. Teachers slept with students without consequence; an unexpected pregnancy meant you could be expelled. Secrets and illegal abortions, it seemed, were the best ways for a girl to hold onto her pride.
The Marriage Dividend - The Paris Review

3 weeks ago | theparisreview.org | Laurie Stone

By Laurie Stone April 17, 2025 Something has changed since Richard and I got married in December. I’m not sure what. Have you ever looked in the mirror and noticed you are able to cock one eyebrow higher than ever before? I’m happier. I didn’t imagine I would feel this way when I went downstairs to his studio and said, “I think we should get married.” He looked up from his book and said, “Okay.” Was he bemused, half smiling? I can’t remember.
What Stirs the Life in You? The Garden Asks - The Paris Review

1 month ago | theparisreview.org | Sophie Haigney |Olivia Kan-Sperling

By Sophie Haigney and Olivia Kan-Sperling April 3, 2025 Each month, we comb through dozens of soon-to-be-published books, for ideas and good writing for the Review’s site. Often we’re struck by particular paragraphs or sentences from the galleys that stack up on our desks and spill over onto our shelves. We sometimes share them with each other on Slack, and we thought, for a change, that we might share them with you.
The Paris Review - Tracings - The Paris Review

1 month ago | theparisreview.org | Sarah Aziza

By Sarah Aziza March 26, 2025 Occasionally, when we were small, our father spoke to us of geography. Daddy is from a place called Palestine, he said, in a lesson captured by my mother on the family’s camcorder. In the footage, my father sits in a small rocking chair, brown eyes intent, a little shy.
The Paris Review - Happy Hundredth Birthday, Flannery O'Connor! - The Paris Review

1 month ago | theparisreview.org | Jamie Quatro

By Jamie Quatro March 25, 2025 A painting in Blair Hobbs’s new exhibition features a cut-out drawing of Flannery O’Connor in a pearl choker and purple V-necked dress. She’s flanked by drawings of peacocks and poppies; a birthday cake on metallic gold paper floats above her head. It is titled, like the exhibition, Birthday Cake for Flannery.
Margo Jefferson, The Art of Criticism No. 6

1 month ago | theparisreview.org | Hilton Als

Interviewed by Hilton Als Margo Jefferson was born in Chicago in 1947, to Irma and Ronald Jefferson, two members of what W. E. B. Du Bois once described as the Talented Tenth, or the Black leadership class.
The Prom of the Colorado River - The Paris Review

2 months ago | theparisreview.org | Meg Bernhard

By Meg Bernhard March 11, 2025 Alfalfa smells warm and earthy and sort of sweet, like socks after a long hike, but not in a bad way. It is soft, with oblong green leaves the size of a pinkie nail.I know this because on a chilly February afternoon I drove a hundred and forty miles to the Imperial Valley, one of the state’s largest farming regions, pulled over to an unattended field, and ripped up a clump.
Making a Claim on Language: A Conversation with Adania Shibli - The Paris Review

2 months ago | theparisreview.org | Max Weiss

By Max Weiss March 10, 2025 The Winter issue of The Paris Review opens with “Camouflage,” a story by Adania Shibli, the first line of which nudges us, ominously, toward a much broader picture: “We have nothing to do with what’s happening.” And yet what’s happening in the story itself isn’t initially clear.