Gemma Sieff
New York
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Articles by Gemma Sieff
“Do You Think This Conversation Is Going Well?” and Other Pickup Lines
By Gemma Sieff September 25, 2026 Guests at the Readme launch party. Photographs by Matt Weinberger. Dreams can come true, and in dreams begin responsibilities. On a Thursday in September, I embarked on an evening of the sort of arduous New York City fun I used to fantasize about as a suburban seventeen-year-old in the year 2000; if I were so lucky as to one day make it here as opposed to anywhere, I’d be breaststroking in a riptide of scene and culture.
Ben Lerner’s Transcription and the Fictional Readymade
The writer's fourth novel is a work of art for a new age of mechanical reproduction Cover of Ben Lerner'sTranscription (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026). SOMETIME AFTER the summer of 2023 and before the summer of 2024, a forty-four- or forty-five-year-old poet, novelist, and MacArthur genius named Ben Lerner traveled to Providence to interlocute an eighty-eight-year-old poet and translator named Rosmarie Waldrop.
Talking About Love in the Afternoon, Morning, Evening and Night
fiction Reading Claude Anet’s provocative 1920 novel “Ariane: A Russian Girl,” the reader may yearn for a little less conversation. While Billy Wilder’s 1957 film adaptation portrays Ariane (played by Audrey Hepburn) as a doe-eyed ingénue, Claude Anet’s original character is considerably more enigmatic. Credit...Allied Artists/Getty Images Aug. 1, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET ARIANE: A Russian Girl, by Claude Anet. Translated by Mitchell Abidor.
The Mosaicist | Harper's Magazine
Discussed in this essay: Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell, by Steve Paul. University of Missouri Press. 416 pages. $45. Typically I’m not much of a rereader; if I really love a book I tend to feel a certain superstition around it, and worry that revisiting it will tarnish the pure, ecstatic lambency of the first encounter. Mrs. Bridge, a 1959 novel by Evan S. Connell, has been the exception.
Sapphires of the Instant
Discussed in this essay: No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood. Riverhead Books. 224 pages. $25. Fake Accounts, by Lauren Oyler. Catapult. 272 pages. $26. I’ve been told by more than one friend that I should get off social media. Not because I’m fighting with people online, but because I’m bad at it. I have hundreds of mysterious Facebook friends from when I was stoned in 2014.
Anna Centenary Library
The Fabulist logo By Samanth Subramanian Issue 11 Shelf Life●July 2015 For the purposes of this story, let’s call my friend Anamika, Sanskrit for “the anonymous woman.” Apart from myself, no one in her circle of family and friends knows that she has spent the past three and a half years in a library. It goes without saying that Anamika has always loved to read.
in praise of justin bieber's all or nothing style
Our favorite writers muse on their muses as we bring back the "My i-Con" essay series for the third year in a row. A couple of years ago, I was on an Internet date with a short, energetic man when conversation sort of ground to a halt. He had already told me about the work he did (branding), the type of bike he rode (a Kestrel), and the niece in his profile pictures.
Top 200 Collectors Home | ARTnews
Art collectors at the uppermost echelons can be a secretive coterie. In an age when some are throwing open doors to gleaming new private museums and revealing their holdings with great fanfare, there are others whose names will never appear on a list like this—because they want no one outside their inner circle to know of their exploits. That is why it was so striking when Yusaku Maezawa posted on Instagram about the Jean-Michel Basquiat painting he purchased for $110 million at Sotheby’s in May.
From Maize to Museum: The Long-Awaited Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa Aims to Let the Continent Tell Its Own Story
Consider contemporary Cape Town: On the one hand, the so-called Mother City, famous for its dramatic vistas, good food, and chill beach vibe, is trendier than ever, welcoming upwards of a million tourists each year.
A Poet’s Loving Take on Her Unorthodox Catholic Family
Nonfiction Patricia Lockwood, in a portrait taken for her first communion. June 9, 2017 (This book was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2017. For the rest of the list, click here.) In his poem “The Novelist,” W. H.
[Weekly Review] | February 3, 2017, by Gemma Sieff | Harper's Magazine
At airports across the country, tens of thousands of Americans protested an executive action signed by President Donald Trump that temporarily barred citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States.[1][2] On Twitter, Trump referred to the executive action as a “ban,” and elsewhere he stated that it was “not a Muslim ban.”[3][4] Immigration officials ignored a federal judge’s injunction against the ban, Whitehouse.gov briefly dropped the...
No Shrinking Violets: A Short Story Collection From Roxane Gay
What constitutes a difficult woman? For Roxane Gay, she is easy — by the third date, one of her troubled, troublesome narrators tells us: “We have already slept together, twice. I’m not a hard sell.” She is also needy, moody and above all unpredictable, which makes her dangerous. She is the opposite of Estelle, a minor character in “Difficult Women,” Gay’s new collection of stories, “a pale blond sliver of Connecticut” who clutches her pearls and thinks Baltimore is a jungle.
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is the Louis CK of the Jews. “I feel like America is the world’s worst girlfriend,” Louis says in one of his routines. “When somebody hurts America, she remembers it forever. But if she does anything bad, it’s like, ‘What? I didn’t do anything.’” Foer, too, likens romance to world events. In his new novel, Here I Am, he compares the dissolution of a marriage to a devastating earthquake in Israel.
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer is the Louis C.K. of the Jews. “I feel like America is the world’s worst girlfriend,” Louis says in one of his routines. “When somebody hurts America, she remembers it forever. But if she does anything bad, it’s like, ‘What? I didn’t do anything.’” Foer, too, likens romance to world events. In his new novel, Here I Am, he compares the dissolution of a marriage to a devastating earthquake in Israel.
There’s a Little Bit of Narcissism in Us All. Kristin Dombek Explains Why.
THE SELFISHNESS OF OTHERS An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism By Kristin Dombek 150 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Paper, $13. In The Paris Review and n+1, Kristin Dombek has written about abortion, addiction, losing her religion and group sex. I suppose you’d call these pieces “personal essays.” This is a category of writing sagging with the baggage of bad associations: the preening college-admissions essay; the flimsy dear-diary entries on xojane.com. But Dombek dignifies the genre.
Martin Amis on Trump; the return of JT LeRoy
Embattled Fox News boss Roger Ailes, accused of sexual harassment by the television host Gretchen Carlson, is negotiating his exit from the network he started twenty years ago, according to one of Ailes’s lawyers. His career there ends as Fox-style rhetoric has all but taken over the GOP. As the New York Times writes: “Mr. Trump’s convention has been a triumph for Mr. Ailes’s brand of smash-mouth and ‘politically incorrect’ politics. . . .
A plot twist for Gay Talese; a new trial for Adnan Syed
Gay Talese’s latest book, The Voyeur’s Motel, comes out July 12 and recounts Talese’s correspondence and encounters with a motelier named Gerald Foos, who tells Talese he spent more than two decades spying on his guests’ amorous activities through specially constructed ceiling vents.
An Invisible Thread
A few weeks ago, early in the morning, I left breezy Cape Town and flew Mango – one of South Africa’s local low-cost airlines – to Durban, a city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Capetonians are snobby about Durban; they call it Dirtbin. It is dirtier than Cape Town, greener and wetter. Sugarcane and a Toyota plant are the mainstays of its economy.
[Memoir] | Isn't It Romantic?, by Gemma Sieff | Harper's Magazine
Two years ago, in the last days of a flatlining relationship, my boyfriend, Bobby, and I were crashing with a pal of his in Altamonte Springs, Florida. Bobby and Max — whose names I’ve changed, like most of the others in this story, along with some identifying details — had grown up together and played on the same elite soccer team.
Divide and Conquer
Sample problems from a mathematics textbook for children between six and twelve years old, published by the Islamic State’s ministry of education. From a mathematics textbook for children between six and twelve years old, published by the Islamic State’s ministry of education. The Islamic State distributed copies of the textbook to schools in Mosul, Iraq, in October, along with curricula for history, religious education, and physical education. Translated from the Arabic by Maged Mikhail.
Modern Vessels With an Ancient Feel
The stoneware vessels crafted by the Los Angeles-based ceramist Eric Roinestad evoke the persevering elegance of water jugs pulled from the volcanic soil of Pompeii. Yet while the objects nod to the past, with their whitewashed bisque palette and smooth matte surfaces, they are clearly of their time.
One Nostalgic (and Handsome) Anti-Bling Watch
Montblanc is best known for its writing implements, but in recent years the company has dived deep into haute horlogerie, or fine watchmaking, especially since its parent company, Richemont, acquired Minerva, the legendary Swiss watchmaker that has manufactured its own movements for more than a hundred years.
Bringing the Masquerade to Your Wrist
Piaget’s one-of-a-kind Serenissima cuff recalls the intricately bejeweled and feathered half-masks ladies once wore as they hurried through Venice’s piazzas en route to midnight balls. To create the bracelet for the venerable watchmaker’s new haute joaillerie collection, the master plumassiere Nelly Saunier assembled a collection of the world’s finest feathers, from such rara avis as the Lady Amherst’s pheasant, the white-throated kingfisher and the Abyssinian roller.
A Fancy Melon Set, Reissued
A wedge of cantaloupe, its sweetness intensified by savory paper-thin prosciutto, is a sophisticated dish worthy of its own superlative utensils. The legendary Danish design house Georg Jensen rises to the challenge with this exquisite melon set made of radiant silver with a softly hammered surface — part graceful scalpel, part elegant spork.
A Lamp That Brings the Cosmos Indoors
This lamp is called Helios and seems to conjure celestial bodies in motion. The sun is a naked bulb, burning bright or barely glowing, depending on how you deploy the dimmer or position the 12-inch hand-spun brass dish that serves as a planetary lampshade — angled in front, it creates a full eclipse.
Dior's Exquisite New Bracelet
The very idea of a cuff can seem constraining, but Victoire de Castellane, the iconoclastic designer of Dior Fine Jewelry since 1998, has spun an exquisitely supple one. De Castellane spent her childhood admiring the sumptuous plissés and chiffons of her grandmother’s evening gowns, and this bracelet, from the Soie Dior collection — a play on the French for silk as well as on the words “be Dior” — captures the fluidity of fabric falling in folds.
A Table That Prizes Form as Well as Function
Both impressive restraint and extravagance are embodied in the Elliott, designed by Rodolfo Dordoni for Minotti: not the sort of coffee table you’ll see strewn with sunglasses and car keys or crowded with a fussy tablescape. It’s a modern jewel box that stands alone, a hybrid of stripped-down geometry and lavish surfaces.
Yasmina Reza’s ‘Happy Are the Happy’
Like a handful of the 18 people who populate her latest novel, “Happy Are the Happy,” Yasmina Reza is formidably accomplished. A prolific novelist and playwright — two of her works for the stage, “Art” and “God of Carnage,” won Tony Awards for best play — as well as a screenwriter and actress, she haunts the halls of power in her native France. “Happy Are the Happy” is another coup, a quick and delicate book that’s as funny as it is humane.
Easy Chair | Issue 21 | n+1 | Gemma Sieff
I began my career in publishing at the New York Review of Books, first as an intern and then as an assistant to the late Barbara Epstein, an exceptional editor and person. Her ear was very fine; her fixes could seem invisible. She was generous to writers, intellectually and emotionally, and loyal. She had a stylish, impish mind and a shy streak. She answered email by hand, scribbling on a printed copy in the faintest blunt pencil, which I transcribed as best I could into the reply field.
A Visit with Evan S. Connell
Evan S. Connell, who died last week, was eighty-six when I interviewed him at Ponce de Leon, a nursing home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had moved after selling his condominium at Fort Marcy. He had lived an incredibly solitary life. One of his caretakers mentioned that some of the other residents assumed at first that he was mute.
Short Hairstyle Trend 2012
I was 10 when my grandmother, never one to mince words, told me it was a pity I'd inherited her terrible hair. She was happy enough with her appearance: hourglass figure, winedark lipstick, Hermès scarf tied just so. But she despaired of her Achilles' follicle, brittle and baby-fine. She never forgot one Parisian taxi driver who had "the most marvelous hair. Red, lustrous, thick.
Photo Ops | Issue 11 | n+1
I know most people have collections of this kind of material, even in the fashion industry. You look at the images from Iraq with that 20-year-old girl making prisoners masturbate for the camera. It comes from porn. I think it will become the norm for people to have cameras in their homes documenting their sexual activity. It’s there; why not bring it out into a mainstream context? Terry Richardson Have you seen this man?
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