Katy Waldman
Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker, for which she writes about books, culture, and more. Previously, she was a staff writer at Slate and the host of the “Slate’s Audio Book Club” podcast. She won the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2019 and the American Society of Magazine Editors’s award for journalists under thirty in 2018.
The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center
Can the fifty-four-year-old arts hub weather the next four years?
How “Severance” Makes a Fetish of the Office
In its second season, the show continues to indict the corporate workplace while secretly longing for it.
Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?
Tracy Wolff, the author of the “Crave” series, is being sued for copyright infringement. But romantasy’s reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.
A Novelist’s Unnerving Memoir of Disordered Eating
In “My Good Bright Wolf,” Sarah Moss recounts a dangerous romance with self-deprivation.
Kamala Harris Makes Her Closing Argument at the Ellipse
At a rally whose location evoked January 6th, Harris sounded the alarm about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies but refused to linger in the national shame spiral that has formed around him.
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The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom
New works by the Zoomer and young millennial writers Gabriel Smith, Frankie Barnet, and Honor Levy share gonzo premises, bizarre imagery, exuberantly “unlikable” characters, and an eye-rolling contempt for the status quo.
Is A.I. Making Mothers Obsolete?
Helen Phillips’s new novel takes place in a dystopian world where the environment has been devastated and humans have outsourced their best selves to tireless, empathetic robots.
“Weird” Is a Rebuke to Republican Dominance Politics
The Democrats’ new favorite attack line has less to do with their opponents’ distance from the norm than with their desired level of control.
The Duelling Incomprehensibility of Biden and Trump in the 2020 Presidential Debates
One of the many asymmetries of the Presidential race is that incoherence helps Trump and hurts Biden.
Is Hunter Biden a Scapegoat or a Favored Son?
The portrait that has cohered at his Wilmington trial is of a precious commodity, a man whom others conspire lovingly to shield.
What COVID Did to Fiction
The early pandemic was a painful, lonely, and disorienting era in American life. It was also a chance to get some writing done.
“The Idea of You” and the Notion of the Hot Mom
Anne Hathaway, as Solène, is a vision of relatability, self-sufficiency, and poise, in a film that proves the rom-com isn’t dead.
When the World Goes Quiet
“The Hearing Test” probes the inner life of a narrator stricken by sudden deafness.
Kelly Link Is Committed to the Fantastic
The MacArthur-winning author on the worthwhile frivolity of the fantasy genre, how magic is and is not like a credit card, and why she hates to write but does it anyway.
“Martyr!” Plays Its Subject for Laughs but Is Also Deadly Serious
In his first novel, the Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar asks whether our pain matters, and to whom, and how it might be made to matter more.
A Novelist of Privileged Youth Finds a New Subject
In “Help Wanted,” Adelle Waldman turns her lens from literary Brooklyn to retail work.
Kate Zambreno Collects Herself
The autofictionist has made the drama of finding and losing the self central to her work. Raising two children during the pandemic prompted a change in focus.
Justin Torres’s Art of Exposure and Concealment
The author, whose novel “Blackouts” won the National Book Award last month, talks about sex in fiction, censorship, and the pleasure of what goes on in the shadows.
The Year of the Female Creep
In novels from “The Guest” to “Biography of X,” vaguely menacing wallflowers took center stage.
The Surprising Sweetness of the Ayn Rand Fangirl Novel
Lexi Freiman’s “The Book of Ayn” paints an obsession with the godmother of libertarianism as a useful but transient phase.
The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center
Can the fifty-four-year-old arts hub weather the next four years?
How “Severance” Makes a Fetish of the Office
In its second season, the show continues to indict the corporate workplace while secretly longing for it.
Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?
Tracy Wolff, the author of the “Crave” series, is being sued for copyright infringement. But romantasy’s reliance on standardized tropes makes proving plot theft tricky.
A Novelist’s Unnerving Memoir of Disordered Eating
In “My Good Bright Wolf,” Sarah Moss recounts a dangerous romance with self-deprivation.
Kamala Harris Makes Her Closing Argument at the Ellipse
At a rally whose location evoked January 6th, Harris sounded the alarm about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies but refused to linger in the national shame spiral that has formed around him.
The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom
New works by the Zoomer and young millennial writers Gabriel Smith, Frankie Barnet, and Honor Levy share gonzo premises, bizarre imagery, exuberantly “unlikable” characters, and an eye-rolling contempt for the status quo.
Is A.I. Making Mothers Obsolete?
Helen Phillips’s new novel takes place in a dystopian world where the environment has been devastated and humans have outsourced their best selves to tireless, empathetic robots.
“Weird” Is a Rebuke to Republican Dominance Politics
The Democrats’ new favorite attack line has less to do with their opponents’ distance from the norm than with their desired level of control.
The Duelling Incomprehensibility of Biden and Trump in the 2020 Presidential Debates
One of the many asymmetries of the Presidential race is that incoherence helps Trump and hurts Biden.
Is Hunter Biden a Scapegoat or a Favored Son?
The portrait that has cohered at his Wilmington trial is of a precious commodity, a man whom others conspire lovingly to shield.
What COVID Did to Fiction
The early pandemic was a painful, lonely, and disorienting era in American life. It was also a chance to get some writing done.
“The Idea of You” and the Notion of the Hot Mom
Anne Hathaway, as Solène, is a vision of relatability, self-sufficiency, and poise, in a film that proves the rom-com isn’t dead.
When the World Goes Quiet
“The Hearing Test” probes the inner life of a narrator stricken by sudden deafness.
Kelly Link Is Committed to the Fantastic
The MacArthur-winning author on the worthwhile frivolity of the fantasy genre, how magic is and is not like a credit card, and why she hates to write but does it anyway.
“Martyr!” Plays Its Subject for Laughs but Is Also Deadly Serious
In his first novel, the Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar asks whether our pain matters, and to whom, and how it might be made to matter more.
A Novelist of Privileged Youth Finds a New Subject
In “Help Wanted,” Adelle Waldman turns her lens from literary Brooklyn to retail work.
Kate Zambreno Collects Herself
The autofictionist has made the drama of finding and losing the self central to her work. Raising two children during the pandemic prompted a change in focus.
Justin Torres’s Art of Exposure and Concealment
The author, whose novel “Blackouts” won the National Book Award last month, talks about sex in fiction, censorship, and the pleasure of what goes on in the shadows.
The Year of the Female Creep
In novels from “The Guest” to “Biography of X,” vaguely menacing wallflowers took center stage.
The Surprising Sweetness of the Ayn Rand Fangirl Novel
Lexi Freiman’s “The Book of Ayn” paints an obsession with the godmother of libertarianism as a useful but transient phase.