Fine Print: Thirty-three top reads of 2024
Messy! Nasty! Silly! Columnist Drew Zeiba revisits the past year in books
Fine Print: You’re a winner, baby
On the heels of the National Book Awards announcements, columnist Drew Zeiba asks what prizes mean for publishing
Desiring literature with Nate Lippens and Kate Zambreno
Following Semiotext(e)‘s release of Lippens’s ‘Ripcord’ and ‘My Dead Book,’ the authors trace consciousnesses of queerness and class through both novels and friendships
Fine Print: Did Michel Houellebecq steal Thomas Bernhard’s coat?
In his monthly column, Drew Zeiba hunts for clues in the controversial French author’s latest novel, ‘Annihilation’
Shapeshifting press Semiotext(e)’s five decades of politics and poetics
For Document’s Fall/Winter 2024–25 issue, Whitney Mallett talks to co-editors, writers, and collaborators of the legendary publisher of theory and fiction
August Thompson’s ‘Anyone’s Ghost’ thrums with tenderness and tension
The writer’s debut novel interrogates grief and masculinity through a gut-wrenching tale of an all-consuming love
Fine Print: ‘The weirder and freakier the better’
Columnist Drew Zeiba sits down with ‘Language Arts’ co-editors Layla Halabian and Sophia June to talk about books, bags, and branding
Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Cellophane Bricks’ collides art writing with narrative imagination
The novelist joins Document to discuss his new collection of prose on the work of Nan Goldin, Rachel Harrison, and several others
Sophie Kemp’s reading list for electric and hilarious prose
These six unrelenting and effervescent titles inspired the writer as she worked on her debut novel ‘Paradise Logic’
Roving literary event Casual Encounterz prioritizes the pen over the persona
Following stints in Mexico City and LA, writer Sammy Loren brings his reading series to NYC to highlight a mix of fiction heavy hitters and...
Is a socialite just a scammer who succeeded?
In an interview with Harron Walker, the author Shola von Reinhold discusses the fabulosity of fabulation and whether some stories should be allowed to disappear
Fine Print: Poetry by any means necessary
For his monthly column, Drew Zeiba traverses New York City in search of performances beyond the page
Even undead, Joan Didion won’t back down
In this AI-facilitated conversation, ‘Mean Boys’ author Geoffrey Mak talks to the late essayist about addiction, critical audacity, and American literature’s CIA roots
Stacy Skolnik’s genre-bending ‘The Ginny Suite’ is an experiment in post-pandemic poetics
The writer discusses her dissociative debut novel’s speculative journey through sex, sickness, and literary form
Fine Print: In the labyrinth of the no
In his monthly column, Drew Zeiba considers the creative merits of giving up through tales of defiant scriveners, starving artists, and painters fluent in refusal
Taking care with the weird, wild, and political literatures of Hard to Read
In memoriam of storyteller Cecilia Gentili, the co-organizers reflect on their winter conversations program which united writers and activists to discuss our political moment
‘Like Love’ guides readers through years of Maggie Nelson’s thoughtful work
The autotheorist’s latest book is a best-of collection of essays equal parts academic and personal
Fine Print: Like letting the world read your diary
Columnist Drew Zeiba considers the risks of leaving a record through the journals of Sheila Heti, Virginia Woolf, and Tina Brown
In Jennifer Croft’s ‘The Extinction of Irena Rey,’ literature is alive—even dangerous
Set in a Polish forest, the award-winning translator’s first novel embarks on a rewilding of language, narrative, and art itself
‘No Judgment’ with Lauren Oyler
The writer’s newest collection of essays reminds us that cultural critics are people too
Fine Print: A Tale of One City
For his monthly column, Drew Zeiba spends 24 hours partying in Manhattan’s alternate literary realities
Fine Print: Can two writers handle real life together?
For his first monthly column, Drew Zeiba asks if art is worth it
Kaur Alia Ahmed crafts poetry in three dimensions with ‘sky, harp’
The New York–based artist and writer merges sound, sculpture, and sport in their debut solo show
Ottessa Moshfegh writes not what we asked for, but what we need
Excavating the dark side of human nature, the author invites readers to find divinity in depravity
50 years at church with the Poetry Project
Whitney Mallett reports on the East Village institution’s 12-hour marathon variety show of unhinged spoken word, absurdist musical sets, and unsettling dance numbers
Lauren Elkin’s ‘Art Monsters’ thrives in the messy
The author’s latest book profiles the great and grimy women of the last century
Eli Payne Mandel’s infinite levity in ‘The Grid’
In his first book, the psychoanalyst-in-training reimagines history’s many apocalypses through lost languages, letters from exile, and dead painters
Ishmael Reed and Boots Riley on the art of cultural agitation
The novelist and the filmmaker talk Oakland, Basquiat, hip-hop, and propaganda for Document’s Fall/Winter 2023 issue
Natasha Stagg’s ‘Artless’ is the fringes of fandom
The book tunnels down the bottomless pit of celebrity, exploring how self-commodification diminishes star power by making stars of us all
The pen, the sword, and liberation
An introduction to Palestinian resistance poetry—a medium for the reclamation of a people’s history
Cookie Mueller’s genius takes center stage at the Roxy
‘For People with Short Attention Spans’ drew a crowd of Downtown luminaries, celebrating the singular voice of the late-great raconteur
‘The Future Future’ is obsessed with words and their failures
Novelist Adam Thirwell joins Document to explain why 18th-century print culture and 21st-century social media discourse aren’t so different
In the confessional with Jodie Foster and David Sedaris
Surveying dialects, dogs, death, and dating, the actor and writer meet for the first time for Document’s Fall/Winter 2023 issue
Inside the Neo-Decadent movement
How a cohort of international writers opposed the status quo, pulling from the endless subjectivity of culture to produce some of the century’s best literature
‘New Millennium Boyz’ is most profound at its most profane
Following the book’s release, Alex Kazemi joined Document to reflect on its mixed reception and consider the tragedies of teen boyhood
The next wave of indie publishing
The founders of 5 independent publications join Document to discuss the past, present, and future of the little magazine
Daytripping: Publication day
In her biweekly column for Document, McKenzie Wark ponders the problem of art in the age of content
Greer Lankton’s sketchbook diagrams the construction of a self
Primary Information’s latest release immortalizes a month in the trailblazing artist’s life—an addendum to her legacy that leaps off the page
Ben Fama’s ‘If I Close My Eyes’ pits two survivors against the world
The novel traces the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Kim Kardashian book signing, blending absurd structures with emotional authenticity
Desired Scenes: Claudia Dey cuts to the core of ‘Daughter’
The author speaks on her latest novel, centering the pleasures, pains, and universalities of the family drama
Genesis according to Lauren Groff
Upon the release of ‘The Vaster Wilds,’ the author talks archival interventions, iambic pentameter, and historical fiction’s bad reputation
The superstructure behind Yiyun Li’s fiction
In elegiac, lyrical, wry, snarky, and wonderfully plain-spoken prose, the author crafts characters through conversational pairs
Claire A. Nivola’s ‘The House in the Country’ reckons with the past, and leaves it behind
Between mulberry picking and rubbing shoulders with the art-world elite, the book finds universality within an extraordinary childhood
Excavating the missing girl—or, at least, the idea of her
‘Brutes’ and ‘All-Night Pharmacy’ destroy the canonical bad girl, allowing for pure(r) heroines to emerge
Motherhood at the end of the world
In ‘The Quickening,’ Elizabeth Rush contemplates parenting and procreation amid Antarctica’s rapidly vanishing ice sheets
Sophia Giovannitti on sex, art, and labor
Working across mediums, the author of ‘Working Girl’ grapples with the contradictions of life under capitalism—complicating notions of consent in a totalizing system
Edan Lepucki’s ‘Time’s Mouth’ is a supernatural labyrinth of past and present
The author and LA native speaks on her latest novel, wrestling with California-specific ideals of place, tempo, and doctrine
For Donatien Grau, all roads lead to LA
California’s cultural capital is the muse behind ‘De Civitate Angelorum,’ the curator’s new book composed entirely in Latin
Maya Binyam’s ‘Hangman’ is an existential journey
The writer’s debut novel traverses an unnamed African nation, exploring the symptoms of diaspora in terms of mourning, identity, and truth
