Read Your Way Around Chicago | The New York Times
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I wrote about how
Chicago is a city of bookish abundance, and recommend work that capture its spirit, and you can read about it here.
Essays
Welcome to Chicago | The Washington Post
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Ahead of the 2024 DNC, I wrote about Chicago’s amazing cultural scene, and you can read about it here.
How Gmail Became Our Diary | New York Magazine
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Gmail just turned 20 (?!?!) and New York Magazine asked a bunch of writers to dig back in our emails for something we’d written in 2004, and talk about it. I found an email from a very wobbly time in my life, and picked it apart. Here’s the link; you can also read entries from writers like Major Jackson, Sloane Crosley, and Paul Murray.
How to Write Across Difference | LitHub
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I wrote about why I’m grateful for our increased sensitivity around issues of cultural appropriation, and how it helped me write the 1980s AIDS Crisis in Chicago in The Great Believers, and you can read it here.
Author Rebecca Makkai’s Week in Zillow Saves | New York Magazine
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I spoke to Jenny Xie about my love of browsing Zillow and you can read about it here.
The World’s on Fire. Can We Still Talk About Books? | Electric Lit
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I wrote about the role of literature in a year when every week brought a new atrocity, and you can read it here.
The Real People: A Conversation with Rebecca Makkai | The Rumpus
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I talked with Chelsea Voulgares of The Rumpus about research methods for The Great Believers, how I arrived at the book’s structure, and my attachment to the story and its characters, and you can read about it here.
Rebecca Makkai on the Most Underutilized Tool in Fiction: Setting | LitHub
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I wrote about the plastic party favor of a compliment, doled out to any writer who’s made decent use of setting: “Your setting is so alive, it’s almost a character!” and you can read it here.
Guest blogger Rebecca Makkai on “Literary Mansplaining” | READ HER LIKE AN OPEN BOOK
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I wrote about (among other things) Rebecca Solnit’s 2008 essay “Men Explain Things to Me” that indirectly gave rise to the term “mansplaining,” and you can read my thoughts on this issue here.
Light Years | Guernica
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I wrote
about a kiss on the lips that might as easily have been a kiss on the forehead, and you can read it here.
