Dear Reader, this season we return to the patient work of attention. The essays in this edition were chosen for their refusal to flatter — and for the way they reward a reader who lingers. We commissioned new criticism on the long form, gathered verse from three continents, and asked our contributors a single question: what, in this moment, is worth re-reading?

Their answers — fragmentary, contested, generous — are the heart of what follows. We have tried, as ever, to make a paper that is unhurried without being slow, and opinionated without being shrill. The hope is small and stubborn: that something here will earn a second pass, a folded corner, a pencil mark in the margin.

The world does not need another opinion delivered at speed. It needs a place willing to slow down.

A note on what is new: our archive now reaches back across every edition we have printed, and our Discover pages have been redrawn so that finding a poem, an essay, or a long review takes one click rather than four. The pleasure of a literary newspaper is in the wandering. We have tried to make the wandering easier.

With gratitude to our subscribers, whose support is the reason this paper exists, and to the writers and translators whose work fills it — thank you for reading.