The American author was not only brilliant but also generous and kind to younger writers, writes Emma BrockesThere is that famous photo of Joan Didion, taken in Malibu in 1976, in which she leans on a deck overlooking the beach, cigarette in hand, scot…
No more pandemic excuses – this Thanksgiving we are going to a party | Emma Brockes
Covid is finally starting to recede into the background to join all the other risks we accept as part of living our livesOne of the hardest things about adjusting to life in late-stage Covid has been the making and seeing through of plans. A sniffle – …
Digested week: which Squid Game are you on, my six-year-old asks | Emma Brockes
This week, horror everywhere: a failing eyesight fail, Roblox violence and a killer batBefore you can even get to the story, the numbers are staggering: there are 78,000 teachers in the New York City public school system, employed across 1,800 schools …
Screens doubled as babysitters during lockdown. What now? | Emma Brockes
Karate, ballet, after-school club … keeping children occupied without technology is exhausting. But worth itIt has been more than a year since most kids had a regular schedule entailing full-time school and a slate of extracurricular commitments. In Ne…
As New York City goes back to its old self, remind me: why do we live like this? | Emma Brockes
The airlessness of lockdown as a family has been replaced with uncomfortable proximity to 8.5 million peopleMore than 1 million kids went back to school in New York this week. In the largest school district in the US, the return looked, from a distance…
Sally Rooney on the hell of fame: ‘It doesn’t seem to work in any real way for anyone’
At 30, the Normal People author is already the most talked-about novelist of her generation. As she readies her third novel, she’s bracing for more (unwanted) attentionSally Rooney appears before a stark, white background, stripped of even the most inc…
My children have had their first taste of competitive sport – and they love it | Emma Brockes
At school in New York, any whiff of competition is firmly avoided. Not so at my six-year-olds’ summer tennis campThere’s a game I play with my children that we never tire of, in which I share details – outlandish, unimaginable – of how things were in t…
New York City, I’ve been taking you for granted | Emma Brockes
It’s the second summer of alternative plans, and the city’s parks, libraries and pools suddenly seem remarkableThe rules of New York City’s public swimming pools are stringent: no flotation aids, no coloured T-shirts, no food, no diving – and, most rem…