Michael Holroyd on the art of biography: “I believe in private life for the living, and I think that when one is dead one should be a little bit bolder, so that the rest of us may have some record of how things actually were.” And Hermione Lee: “Some cynical biographer said to me, Make sure it’s a good death. Make sure you’re not picking someone who just declined.” Imre Kertész on the art of fiction: “Perhaps I’m being impertinent, but I feel that my work has a rare quality—I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.”

New fiction from Lydia Davis, Ben Lerner, Robert Walser, Gillian Linden, David Gates, and Emma Cline, and an essay by Kristin Dombek.

Poems by Patrizia Cavalli, D. Nurkse, Henri Cole, Geoffrey Brock, Gretchen Marquette, Karl Kirchwey, Donna Stonecipher, Rachel Hadas, CHarles Harper Webb, and Henk Rossouw. A portfolio from the collection of Annette and Peter Nobel.