The Neo-Romantic Literary Life

Sometime after 2020, the literary nightlife came back to New York. It is plausible it existed in the 2010s and I simply missed it, but the more I inquire about that decade, the more I realize that whatever it was like then is very different than today. New magazines spring up like gorgeous little flowers and there are fresh reading series that are remarkably devoid of literary gatekeeping. The readers and writers aren’t famous, and may never be, and there’s a sense that the yearnings for the old markers of prestige are falling away—mostly because these markers have ceased to mean all that much. It is time, in these last days of 2025, to get a full handle on it all and describe what’s now before us.