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Just learned: You can register now for a Goodreads giveaway of THE STORY OF THE BODY: Poems of Illness & Recovery, if you're interested. 💙 www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Book giveaway for The Story of the Body: Poems of Illness & Recovery by Meghan O'Rourke Jul 30-Aug 27, 2026Enter to win one of 10 free copies available. Giveaway dates from Jul 30-Aug 27, 2026. A major new anthology of poems about illness and resilience—eighty...www.goodreads.com

Cover reveal! ⚡ I edited a poetry anthology: THE STORY OF THE BODY: POEMS OF ILLNESS AND RECOVERY, out this fall from W. W. Norton—82 of the best poems I've read on illness, medicine & caretaking. George Herbert, Sylvia Plath, Jericho Brown & more. please consider pre-ordering to support!

Summer reading: I love this memoir-cum-story of a critic's origins by Brian Dillon. It's a book about grief and love and bewilderment--the best kind of book, in short! Comes out this fall from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

A new poem from me in @newyorker.com, about C-sections and children and Rothko. I hope you enjoy! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Sectioned”“I wanted to sleep, / having been cut in half; / having been turned from one to two.”www.newyorker.com

Was an honor and a joy to judge the @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social in Memoir this year, and I'm so delighted that @appletwigli.bsky.social received the award for her stunning book THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW. I am also glad we could shine a light on the other finalists:

Tonight! This should be a really interesting conversation about writing past shame, how narrative nonfiction forms can create possibilities for complexity and understanding that others don't about of course living through and past trauma. The book is amazing. Come out!

I'm very much looking forward to speaking with Neige Sinno about writing past silence and taboo around sexual assault and more at the Pen American World Voices Festival. Her book SAD TIGER is a truly astonishing work. Come on by if you're around on May 1 at 8pm at the Church of the Village in NYC:

A new piece from me at @atlantic: Modern medicine has diagnosis crisis, which isn't just about rare diseases — a huge number of people with #longCOVID, #MECFS, & more go needlessly undiagnosed b/c patients aren't listened to, as Alexandra Sifferlin shows: www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

The Paradox of Modern MedicineTesting has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.www.theatlantic.com

I'm really looking forward to this online conversation with three writers I admire talking about writing and illness and celebrating 25 years of Bellevue Literary Review!

Elizabeth Bishop wrote sixteen drafts of "One Art." The first is practically a journal entry. The last is one of the greatest poems in English. What happened in between was play. I wrote a new Substack post on drafting, play, and forgetting what you know: substack.com/home/post/p-...

How to Write Better DraftsWhat Elizabeth Bishop’s drafts can teach us about letting go and just starting.substack.com

Thrilled to share that @yalereview.bsky.social has been named a finalist for two National Magazine Awards — General Excellence (in Science, Literature and Politics) and Fiction! I know how fierce the competition is. So proud of our small but mighty team and are amazingly hard-working writers. 🎉

Come do a workshop with me in Aspen this June at the Aspen Words Conference!

One horrific thing about reading the Epstein files and the aftermath is not just the abuse, but the tone and scope: powerful men insisting on their own injury or blamelessness while propping up a system that treats women as collateral. This isn’t aberration but an intact culture.

A must watch. (And Shakespeare, my god: "Your mountainish inhumanity" is the perfect phrase.)

We need to reinvigorate books coverage in this country; the WaPo news is a very sad new development. But there is already a shrinking coverage in newspapers and magazines, and a real need to reimagine how we talk about and write about books

I wrote a new Substack about endings. It began as a craft talk but became something a bit broader — a way of thinking about why endings are so hard, and what they actually do. If you struggle with endings (don’t we all!) you might enjoy it: meghanorourke.substack.com/p/what-endin...

What Endings Really DoA writer and editor's guide to shaping the last lines of your work — from Rilke to The Great Gatsby.meghanorourke.substack.com

Glad to see so many wonderful books on the NBCC prizes' short list, and many more I need to read; congrats to my friends Katie Kitamura and Kevin Young whose books I loved: www.bookcritics.org/awards/

Thrilled to share my poem “Changing Table” which is out in this week The New Yorker (Jan 19, 2026). It’s the first poem I’ve sent out in a while. Grateful to Kevin Young and @newyorker.com for publishing it! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Changing Table”“The thing about children is: / they disappear.”www.newyorker.com

I'm so honored to have my work featured on the Slow Down! Thank you, @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social. Wonderful timing, as I'm writing poems again and trying to finish a manuscript. New poems coming soon from some magazines near you! ✨

My son is texting me for the first time and it's quite the wild ride. How do they learn to be so Gen Alpha without even practicing?