Essays · Journalism · Criticism

Writing that finds the truth in ordinary things

I write personal essays and longform journalism about memory, place, and what it means to pay attention. My work appears in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere.


Featured Work

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The Atlantic

An essay on time, grief, and the strange mercy of forgetting what we believed we could not survive.

March 2024 · 3,200 words
Harper's Magazine

Reporting from the Mississippi Delta on flood, loss, and the long memory of a region that refuses to be still.

November 2023 · 6,800 words
The New Yorker

A defense of curiosity for its own sake, in an age of optimization and frictionless relevance.

August 2023 · 2,400 words


Alex Rivers

About Alex Rivers

I'm a writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. My essays and reporting focus on the overlooked corners of American life — the places and people that resist easy narrative.

I'm the author of Between the Lines (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), a collection of essays about growing up between cultures. I hold an MFA from Columbia University and have been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony.

I'm available for commissions, speaking engagements, and conversations about writing.

The Atlantic Harper's The New Yorker n+1 Paris Review Guernica Longreads

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New essays and occasional notes on reading and writing — no more than once a month.