Other Writing

A “Life and Letters” essay for The New Yorker about the journal of Claude Fredericks, a Bennington classics professor who was the model for the character Julian Morrow in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (November 8, 2021). With link to audio version.

“Buh Black Snake in New England,” an essay for the Oxford American (Issue 108, Spring 2020).

An appreciation of Martha Gellhorn’s novel The Stricken Field, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, May 28, 2017.

A review of Kathleen Alcott’s novel America was Hard to Find in Bookforum.

A review of Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories from The New Republic on July 29, 2015.

“Teaching the Controversy,” an essay about teaching Richard Wright and James Baldwin in the post-Ferguson era, from the June 2015 issue of The New Republic. 

“Iowa City, 1992: a Social Network,” an essay about the best literary bar in the country, appeared in Lit Hub on April 8, 2015

From the Opinionator section of The New York Times on December 15, 2014.

“The Breakup List,” a Lives Column for The New York Times Magazine on June 15, 2014.

Read Anastas’s review of Marcos Giralt Torrente’s story collection The End of Love (McSweeney’s) in the December / January 2014 issue of Bookforum.

“Boys With a Synth” appeared in Issue No. 6 of The Common, released on October 28, 2013.

“A Feast for the Senses” appeared in The New York Times Sunday Book Review on March 22, 2013.

“God, Living is Enormous” appeared in Bookforum in September, October, and November of 2009.

“O Pioneers!” appeared in The New York Times Magazine on November 4, 2011.

Anastas was a guest on WBUR’s “On Point” with Tom Ashbrook to talk about Emerson, January 4, 2012.

“Mammon from Heaven: The prosperity gospel in recession” was published in Harper’s Magazine, March 2010.

“The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance'” appeared in The New York Times Magazine on December 2, 2011.

“The Final Days” appeared in The New York Times Magazine on July 1, 2007.