Bookforum

11/05/2025

Bookforum is pleased to announce that we are partnering with writers and on Season 3 of their podcast Reading Writers. Each episode, Livingstone and Shane will talk about what they’ve been reading and invite their special guests to enthuse about a significant or provocative book of their choice. Please consider supporting Reading Writers on Patreon, where you can access bonus materials and share your guest and book-coverage requests. Link in bio!!

04/23/2025

The Spring 2025 issue of Bookforum is out now! This edition features Lidija Haas on Shulamith Firestone’s portrayal of life with mental illness; Moira Donegan on Peter Hujar’s photobook “Portraits in Life and Death”; and Jane Hu on “Audition,” the final novel in Katie Kitamura’s translation trilogy. Also in the issue: David Velasco talks with Sarah Schulman about her new book on solidarity and resistance, Harmony Holiday considers Nettie Jones’s 1983 novel “Fish Tales,” Audrey Wollen writes about Ariana Reines’s “Wave of Blood,” Kay Gabriel and Patrick DeDauw review the complete three-volume set of Peter Weiss’s “The Aesthetics of Resistance,” and so much more.

Subscribe or renew your subscription today to receive the print issue and support Bookforum. And consider making a donation or gifting a subscription. Thank you, as ever, for reading.

On the cover: Peter Hujar, “Self-Portrait Jumping (I),” 1974. © 2025 The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

08/29/2023

The Summer 2023 issue of Bookforum is out now!

When the magazine was shuttered late last year, we weren’t sure we’d ever be able to make Bookforum again, and the essays in our summer 2023 issue reflect our own preoccupations with death, rebirth, money, belonging, and the place of art in society. Read Sarah Nicole Prickett on Jacqueline Rose, Moira Donegan on trauma and justice, Jane Hu on Emma Cline, Harmony Holiday on Christina Sharpe, and so much more . . .

Follow the link in our bio to read the issue now! And if you don’t already, consider subscribing, or gifting a subscription, or donating to keep Bookforum going. On the cover: Pavlina Alea, Pretty in Blue (detail), 2022, acrylic on linen, 80 × 60". © Pavlina Alea.

08/22/2023

PAPER TRAIL: at The New York Review of Books, read Namwali Serpell on how Toni Morrison can teach us how to remember her; filmmaker Anna Biller discusses her debut novel at Screen Slate; a new Vauhini Vara story in BOMB Magazine; former Motherboard staff launch 404 Media.

paper trail Former Motherboard staff launch 404 Media; filmmaker Anna Biller on slasher films and her debut novel August 22, 2023 Anna Biller in Viva For the New York Review of Books, Namwali Serpell reflects on her visit this spring to Princeton’s exhibit on Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who died...

08/15/2023

PAPER TRAIL: Maya Binyam at Skylight Books on Thursday, new online seminar from Parapraxis magazine, ​​an excerpt from Naomi Klein's new book, Adam Shatz interviewed by J. Howard Rosier, and more in our regular news and reviews roundup.

paper trail Becca Rothfeld on feminism today; Maya Binyam discusses her novel “Hangman” at Skylight Books August 15, 2023 Maya Binyam. Photo: Tonje Thilesen At the Paris Review, Jaqueline Feldman looks into how Parisian bookshops are preparing for next summer’s Olympics. “With a diving suit ...

08/08/2023

Paper Trail is back today! With a preview of what's to come in Bookforum's summer issue . . .

paper trail A sneak peek at Bookforum’s summer issue; Paper Trail returns August 08, 2023 ­Edvard Munch, Todeskuss (The Kiss of Death), 1899, lithograph, 173⁄4 x 241⁄2". Bookforum’s summer issue is being shipped to subscribers and hitting newsstands soon! This marks our first issue produced...

06/26/2023

Thank you to all our new subscribers! To tide you over until our first issue back, access our print archive here: https://bookforum.com/print/archive

06/26/2023

The magazine relaunches today in partnership with The Nation

06/23/2023

We’re no longer in the past tense. Bookforum lives, and you can get our forthcoming summer issue by subscribing now for only $30:

Start your subscription to Bookforum today.

06/22/2023

Help us spread the word: Bookforum is back!

The literary magazine will be back in print in August, with a new publishing partner: The Nation.