Writing

Writing

"So if you use them in January," LaMantia recalls being told, "you better hope there's nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year." The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. "I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you don't, the message sounds more stern," he says. "But I can't remember the last time I used one in a business article."

This year's slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts - when words like " w00t," " blog," " tweet" and even " face with tears of joy " emoji (😂) were chosen - this year's selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation and fake relationships.

I didn't set out to be poetic. I set out to ride. But somewhere between mile 30 and mile 70, between sunrise and sunset, I started hearing the road differently. Not just as terrain, but as verse. The hum of my tires was meter. The climbs and descents, line breaks. The miles, stanzas. Sometimes the words come on the ride itself. Sometimes they come when I'm lying in my tent or sipping juice the next morning. But they always come. Because long rides strip the noise away. What's left is what matters.

It was nobody's fault, but here I am, lying on the damp floor of a wood, half a mile from the road. Drifting down with the falling leaves are the voices of two women, too easily accepting of blame. I reassure them and try to sit up, but the high singing in my ears turns to static, the edges of the wood begin to pixelate, and I lie down again before I faint.

Blue baby, of the first generationwhose hole in the heart could be closed in an operating theatrewhere the show must and did go on, you thought yourself lucky as a sicklychild, who got to spend whole days reading long books in bed.An early obsession with Louis Seize and the costume drama of Versaillesmade you the director you were, blocking actors in your head.Or so we believed; you told good stories.

When Gay Talese's landmark profile, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," appeared in Esquire in April 1966, it marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of journalism. This was the birth of what came to be known as New Journalism - a narrative-driven style that blended rigorous reporting with literary techniques, placing the reporter's voice and observations at the heart of the story.

Faith Ringgold did not simply paint historyshe broke it open. She reached into the marrow of America's most violent foundations, pulled forth the bones, and demanded that we look. Her Slave Rape Seriesraw, spiritual, brutal, and incandescentremains one of the most courageous achievements in American art, a portal through which the full seismic force of her career becomes legible. Through these paintings, she forged a new language for Black womanhood, a new architecture for Black truth, and an entirely new horizon for artistic liberation.

For me, it is a presence. A nudge. A gentle hand slowly turning my chin towards the windows, where their white trunks reach skywards and their golden leaves glow in the three-sun dawn. I find myself pressing my fingers to the tempered glass when I'm supposed to be conducting experiments or tidying up the mess hall. My feet work their way into the airlock without conscious reason.

What's in a name? As people such as Peach, Riot and Aquaman have found, it can change your life for the better, or worse. With this in mind, we would like to hear from people with unusual names about how it affects others' perceptions of you. How has your name shaped your life? Share your experience You can tell us about how your name has shaped your life using this form.

Hail Thor! The priestess and her heathens, standing in a circle, raised their mead-filled horns. We were gathered in an unassuming spot in a pine forest outside Stockholm. This was our temple, and the large, mossy stone before us was our altar. I was relieved to see that the animal-based sacrificial offerings were long-dead and highly processed. A bearded man reached his tattooed arms into his backpack and raised a red, horseshoe-shaped sausage to the sky.

The kayaker who went missing-and stayed missing for so long that rescue teams were at a loss. The seemingly perfect man who conned women-and was brought to justice by his own victims. The following stories pack a double punch, starting with a mysterious circumstance and tracing the story to places unknown and unexpected. Today, sit back and explore five gripping reads that aren't what they seem.

On October 26, 2025, the New Yorker staff writers Larissa MacFarquhar, Rebecca Mead, Ian Parker, Kelefa Sanneh, and Michael Schulman joined the executive editor Daniel Zalewski onstage at the 26th annual New Yorker Festival, a weekend of conversations, screenings, performances, and more. The Festival, which is the magazine's signature event, was held in New York City and brought together leading voices in literature, film, comedy, television, politics, and medicine.

To be honest, people are saying "honestly" all the time. According to the Corpus of Historical American English, a database that measures word usage over time, the use of "honestly" has skyrocketed over the last 25 years. Not just in casual conversation: It's a signifier of online authenticity. "Honestly" is the name of the podcast by CBS News' new editor Bari Weiss, the title of a 2022 studio album by Drake, the name of a new AI journaling app and appended to a number of popular TikTok and Instagram accounts.

According to a survey conducted by Self.com earlier this year, 45% of Americans have a side hustle, with 10.5% of side hustlers noting that they earn over $1,000 monthly from their gigs. The survey also found that the average side hustle brings in $688 per month and that the highest proportion of those with a side hustle (36.2%) spend five to 10 hours per month on their side gig.

Once they came down only at dark from the canyons. Now they trot out bold in daylight on sunlit pavement. Still, if you move close, they vanish fast into shadows under the freeway, blocks from the ocean. Up beyond the flammable mansions on over- built lots, where they once burrowed safe, gave birth to ravenous young. Now they watch under scaffolding swinging above sliding foundations. Near the homeless tarps, scattered fires.

Imagine that you knew nothing about me, that you had arrived from another planet, perhaps, and had been given my books to read, and you had never heard my name or been told anything about my life or about the attack on The Satanic Verses in 1989. Then, if you read my books in chronological order, I don't believe you would find yourself thinking, Something calamitous happened to this writer's life in 1989.

She could have told me the truth, that the paint was graffiti. Instead, she told me the rocks were a species of monster called bloodsuckers, and that at night they came alive to eat children who were foolish enough to stray outside after dark. I believed her with all my heart. Why wouldn't I? She was my nan!

Many things have changed over the decades, including social norms, beliefs, and practices. In fact, some things that were considered normal back then probably wouldn't be viewed as acceptable now, and older adults from the BuzzFeed Community know all about them. Here are some "old-fashioned" beliefs from the past that would now be seen as "wild": 1. "In the late '70s to early '80s, if a child had an earache, parents would just blow cigarette smoke into their ear. Drinking during pregnancy was normalized, too!" - brandielitchfield

"The stories that are most rewarding are often the ones that really fill you with a cold dread as you begin, because you're inventing something that doesn't lean into a template," the New Yorker staff writer tells Bustle. "It requires a lot more imagination, and I think it's perfectly natural to stop and think 'I could have just done this the easy way. Why didn't I?'"

This autumn, down in tunnels where London's stories flow, TfL is sharing poems as the colder breezes blow. For four short weeks, six voices will accompany your ride, From Hungary, New Zealand, Africa, and far and wide. Sheenagh Pugh brings Days of November, racing to get things done, While Janet Frame reminds us that we strain beneath the sun. Katalin Szlukovényi writes of crowds and modern ties, Pressed close on busy networks where our tangled worlds collide. For history and remembrance, two poems

You wanted more quizzes, and we've delivered! Now you can test your wits every day of the week. Each weekday, your host, Ray Hamel, concocts a challenging set of unique questions on a specific topic. At the end of the quiz, you'll be able to compare your score with that of the average contestant, and Slate Plus members can see how they stack up on our leaderboard. Share your score with friends and compete to see who's the brainiest.

When I was leaving London for Melbourne, my eldest sister-in-law told her kids not to forget the tradition to throw a bowl of water behind me as I stepped out the door. Just a small splash on the ground, a gesture older than borders. La har azaab po aman se, she whispered in Pashto under her breath may all hardship stay away from you. The little ones giggled and waved their goodbyes as they spilled the water, somewhere between shy and amused.

It seemed no more than a curious footnote-a counterfeiter so outlandishly inept that his forged dollar bills were detectable even at a casual glance. Nearly all were emblazoned with a telltale flaw: the name of America's first President was spelled "Wahsington." The scammer, who operated in the New York area from 1938 to 1948, was known to the often exasperated agents of the U.S. Secret Service as No. 880, for the number of his case file.

If you are reading this, your world is in grave danger. Touch nothing. Take no samples. Leave this place immediately. Destroy everything you have brought here, and never return. We have left this message in stone, in every language we have ever known, to stop a horrible threat. Heed these words, even though you do not want to. "What does it say?" "Beats me." "Isn't language supposed to be a big subject for a linguistics specialist?"

I have never been good at saying "no." My default response to invitations, favors, and requests of any kind is "Totally!" "Absolutely!" or the most self-betraying of all, "Can't wait!" I will agree to lunch when I am drowning in deadlines. I will volunteer when I am already exhausted. Then I spend the next week rearranging my life to accommodate a yes I did not mean.

"Her voice is as familiar to me as my own," says Theo Downes-Le Guin, youngest child of hugely influential Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin. "That voice is inside my head while I'm reading." Most aren't so fortunate, even if they feel at home in Le Guin's Earthsea and Hainish universes. Before her death in 2018, Le Guin was unanimously regarded as the leading light of American science fiction.

That meant I had access to the Consolidated Files: 16 million three-by-five slips of paper, known as citations, or "cits"-pronounced sites -with examples of word usage culled for more than a century from newspapers, magazines, academic publications, trade journals, contemporary fiction, advertisements, radio transcripts, television shows, annual reports, government reports, cereal boxes, photo captions, comic strips, seed catalogs, restaurant menus, car manuals, airline tickets, you name it.

When I tell people about the new novel I just finished, the first thing they ask is whether it's sexy. The question is understandable: The book, SenLinYu's Alchemised, is a romance novel adapted from the author's own Harry Potter fan fiction, and both genres are known for featuring sex-leading to the common assumption that their readers are seeking explicit scenes. But Alchemised is not particularly erotic.

But if you talk to people in the publishing industry, you'll also hear a few names that aren't riding high with the bookies, such as Swiss Popliteratur novelist Christian Kracht, whose Eurotrash was longlisted for the International Booker this year. Australian novelist Gerald Murnane has been a perennial bookies' favourite, but if the prize goes to Down Under, some suggest it's more likely to be awarded to Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright instead.

Now you have freely given me leave to love, What will you doe? Shall I your mirth, or passion move, When I begin to wooe; Will you torment, or scorn, or love me too? Each petty beauty can disdain, and I Spight of your hate Without your leave can see, and dye; Dispense a nobler Fate! 'Tis easy to destroy, you may create.