Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon
Essays and Criticism
“Briefly Noted,” The New Yorker, May 2023-present
Short reviews of fiction and nonfiction books
“Mentions: The Court Jester,” The Drift, Summer 2024
On the overlooked 1956 movie musical
“No Great Name on Earth,” The Missouri Review BLAST, Nov 2023
Middlemarch as a lens on my mother's career choices, and mine
“I Must Be Making It All Up: On Sigrid Nunez's 'The Vulnerables',” LA Review of Books, Nov 2023
On the novel as pandemic pod
“Weeding or Writing: On 'Henry at Work',” Cleveland Review of Books, Sept 2023
In which Thoreau and I leave our comfortable lives to give farming a try
“The Birder,” The Paris Review Daily, April 2023
On the summer I met a birder
"An Interview with Elaine Katzenberger," National Book Critics Circle, April 2023
I spoke with the executive director of City Lights, the recipient of the NBCC Toni Morrison Achievement Award
“Reconfigured,” The Iowa Review, Winter 2022/2023
How a sense of scale shapes lived and literary experience
“When Corporate Language Kills,” Current Affairs, Sept/Oct 2022
On corporate jargon, Wittgenstein, and the opioid crisis
“Endless Particulars,” Fourth Genre, Fall 2021
On the role of the particular in literary and bodily attention
“Here Are Our Hands,” Clarion, Fall 2019
A relationship between a poet and a story-maker
“City Birds,” Pangyrus, Nov 2018
A meditation on Cambridge’s turkey population
“Answering Alternative Facts with Fiction,” Pangyrus, May 2018
The falsity of fiction as a response to political untruth
“Dismantling Communication—Literally,” Pangyrus, Dec 2016
On the power of the word “literally” used before metaphorical phrases
Academic Writing & Presentations
“Nella Larsen's Ambivalent Heteroglossia.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association conference presentation, Oct 2023
"The Ethics of Form." UC Berkeley Grad Slam, semi-finalist, April 2023
“Contingency, Opacity, Belief: Ethics in The Wings of the Dove.” The Henry James Review, Spring 2023
“Choosing to Lose: The Ethics of Cliché.” Art, Language, and Freedom conference presentation, Swarthmore College, March 2020