The reporter and essayist Ariel Levy assembles masterly narratives about lives in transition. Since 2008, she has contributed more than seventy pieces to The New Yorker, on topics such as the scandal-ridden legacy of Silvio Berlusconi, the extraordinary life and vigorous activism of Edith Windsor, and the “post-patriarchal television” of Joey Soloway, the “Transparent” showrunner then known as Jill. The author of “The Rules Do Not Apply” and “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” Levy expertly, unsparingly plumbs her own emotional truths and those of her subjects. In 2013, she published “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” an intimate essay about her life as a roving reporter and a harrowing work trip that took her overseas during the holiday. The piece, which won the National Magazine Award for essays and criticism, explores Levy’s love for travel and her exultation in new adventures. She recounts how, as a child, she would come alive imagining distant journeys, finding sparks of inspiration in literature that led, in turn, to her desire to become a writer. At the age of thirty-eight, she decided to embark on a new adventure: motherhood. “After only two months, I could hear the heartbeat of the creature inside me at the doctor’s office,” she observes. “It seemed like magic: a little eye of newt in my cauldron and suddenly I was a witch with the power to brew life into being. Even if you are not Robinson Crusoe in a solitary fort, as a human being you walk this world by yourself. But when you are pregnant you are never alone.” Levy writes with delicate precision about the transformative nature of pregnancy, and how it reveals itself in moments both quiet and overwhelming. A skilled literary (and physical) explorer, she takes us on a pilgrimage of unanticipated poignancy and depth. Fuelled by lucid, bracing prose, her piece becomes a journey in itself—an expedition of emotional rebirth for both the author and her readers.
—Erin Overbey, archive editor