I'm looking forward to my death,” she said.I sat upright. I watched her blond hair sway,this college girl who taught our Sunday School.

The tail, held back along the spine, keeps them—most times—from kicking you. I don’t know why.

In the dust as she swung back and forth. Block letters cut into her wrist spelled Paul.

The Paris Review is a literary magazine featuring original writing, art, and in-depth interviews with famous writers.

Each week, The Paris Review unlocks stories, poems, and interviews for our readers from our archive. Sign up for the Redux newsletter to receive these pieces to your inbox every Sunday morning.

In our series Making of a Poem, we ask poets to dissect the poems they’ve contributed to our pages. Zain Baweja’s “Gloss,” which appears in our Summer issue, no. 256, plays with the etymological ...

The Queen Smell the lilies and the columbine, intoxicating rose, seductive lily- of-the-valley, come smell! Can’t they die? Must they suffer the hothouse of her crown, the stars of her triumphant ...

This piece is fictional, and intended purely as a parody. It is not intended to communicate any true or factual information, and is for entertainment purposes only. Barbecues, mainly. And this is part ...

The letters which follow were written by Gertrude Stein to an obscure, struggling writer named Wendell Wilcox. He had seen Stein’s work in 1926 while he was an undergraduate at the University of ...

“After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So—Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.” ...

The TikTok in question, posted by Donald Trump last summer, shows Barack Obama being wrestled to the floor, handcuffed, and held in a jail cell. The camera moves, or “moves,” too smoothly, and ...

The spark for Hélène Bessette’s third book came while she was on holiday with her two sons on the northern coast of France. One night, they heard a gunshot in the hotel where they were staying; ...