Paris Review #252 2025

Fanny Howe on the Art of Poetry: “If I could say I was assigned something at birth, it would be to keep the soul fresh and clean, and to not let anything bring it down.”

Marie NDiaye on the Art of Fiction: “Oh, no! Reading beautiful books can’t be traumatizing. Seeing awful things can be—but reading? I don’t believe in that at all.”

Prose by Anuk Arudpragasam, Tom Crewe, GauZ’, Zans Brady Krohn, and Joy Williams.

Poetry by Will Alexander, John Berryman, Yongyu Chen, Eugene Ostashevsky, Ricardo Reis, and Nell Wright.

Art by Anne Collier, Celia Paul, and Alessandro Teoldi; cover by Tyler Mitchell.