September 10, 2026 – “Saad passed through a boarded up, overgrown town and thought, Who would live in this place?” ...

Each week, The Paris Review unlocks stories, poems, and interviews from our archive for our readers. This week, to read ...

I wondered briefly what fear was. Where on earth did it come from?

September 9, 2026 – “But I did feel, as we worked on this one, that I was listening in on many voices whose speakers were ...

And that the first thing he found in Hell was the sublime face of Atlas, who, with the world on his shoulders, ...

Lately, though, I have become fascinated by the so-called big bands on the SiriusXM station called ‘40s Junction.’ ” ...

It started with what and went from there.

In London, trash is called rubbish and taking it out is a science. There is a bag for trash, a bag for compost, and a bag for recycling, a bag that is bestowed by one’s neighbo(u)rhood council and ...

An encounter with Emerson’s essays. This past October, I found myself in the store looking at a 1990 Vintage Books edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays. Not having read much Emerson before, even as ...

Who hasn’t had a boss, supervisor, or mentor worthy of complaint? The first person I worked for, who was white, was in the habit of calling me “weak.” Her boss’s boss, also white, one day gave a ...

When I began to research the history of crosswords for my recent book on the subject, I was sort of shocked to discover that they weren’t invented until 1913. The puzzle seemed so deeply ingrained in ...

Each week, The Paris Review unlocks stories, poems, and interviews from our archive for our readers. This week, we’ve unlocked our interview with Hermione Lee, selected by Daisy Hildyard, whose story ...