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Essays

In the Times Literary Supplement, I put my spin on the culture of Brooklyn laundromats.

For the New York Times Magazine, an essay about the deeper meaning of subway naps. (I promise, there is one.)

For the Atlantic, an essay about insecurity—digital and emotional. Come for the grisly tale of hacking; stay for the Proust!

For Harper’s, an essay about childhood, fantasy books, science, witches, a brutal winter, a jokester pediatrician, and related concerns.

For the New Yorker, my hard-hitting investigation into the origins of a mysterious rhyme on a park sign.

Bad call? My meditations on the pocket dial, for the Paris Review’s website.

Confessions of a bookish boomeranger: on the New Yorker’s website, I describe the pleasures and perils of living in one’s childhood bedroom forever.

For TIME, an essay about 9/11’s effect on my generation (and me).

For the Poetry Foundation, a meditation on why good people like bad poetry.

And for the Poetry Foundation, an account of my adventures with Edgar Allan Poe’s reconstructed corpse.

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About

I'm a writer, editor, and educator whose work appears in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, Poetry, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, n+1, Bookforum, and other publications.

I am a winner of the Center for Fiction's Roger Shattuck Award for Criticism and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. I have also received the Editors Prize for Reviewing from Poetry magazine. In 2014, I was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. From 2009–2019, I wrote monthly poetry guides for Poetry magazine. 

I teach at Columbia Journalism School and tutor New York City high school students in a variety of subjects. I’m a specialist in the college admissions process.

Drop me a line: writeabigail [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Poems

In Prelude, two September poems.

In Poetry, a September poem and a poem for all seasons.

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Podcast & Radio

On NPR's All Things Considered, I discussed a talking dog and the angst of autumn.

On NPR, I talked about Philip Seymour Hoffman, and an excellent novel that reminded me of him.

For the Poetry Foundation, a podcast about the poetry that emerged from September 11.

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Reviews

For Harper’s Magazine:

My take on the late, great Bette Howland.

For The New York Times Book Review:

• On an Amish apocalypse.

• I sing of swings and swingers.

• I review Michele Zackheim's Last Train to Paris, a novel that goes slightly off the rails.

For The Wall Street Journal:

• I reviewed -- and, er, related to -- Bette Howland's surprisingly hilarious memoir of madness.

• On the many pivots of a pivotal poet: my review of a biography of Elizabeth Bishop.

• My review of a double-biography of Lord Byron’s wife and daughter.

• My review of a biography of James Merrill—a writer who gave new meaning to the term "ghost story." 

• On James Laughlin, ladies' man and man of letters. 

• On the strange, tough life of a strange, tough poet: my review of the new Marianne Moore biography. 

• My take on Sherwood Anderson's trippy stories—and his storied trip. 

• My bit on the brain and the Bard.

• An essay on Jack Gilbert, but really on whales.

• One review of the lovely correspondence between William Maxwell and Eudora Welty ...

• … and another of T.S. Eliot's really, really, really redundant (and sneakily splendid) letters. 

For Poetry magazine:

• Of poets and potties! Of talents and toilets! A review of Michael Robbins's Alien vs. Predator and A. E. Stallings's Olives.

• Reviews of H. L. Hix & Co., Terrance Hayes & Co., Matthew Zapruder & Co., and Rae Armantrout & Co.

For the Los Angeles Times: 

• Reviews of Tom Bissell's Extra Lives and Adam Schwartzman's Eddie Signwriter.

For the San Francisco Chronicle: 

• Reviews of Henry Roth's An American Type, Adam Levin's The Instruc- tions, Ismail Kadaré's The Accident, and H. G. Adler's Panorama.

For n+1: 

• A review of April Bernard's Romanticism.