Larissa MacFarquhar
@LarissaMacFarquLarissa MacFarquhar has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. Her Profile subjects have included John Ashbery, Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky, Hilary Mantel, Derek Parfit, David Chang, and Aaron Swartz, among many others. She is the author of “Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help” (Penguin Press, 2015). Before joining the magazine, she was a senior editor at Lingua Franca and an advisory editor at The Paris Review, and wrote for Artforum, The Nation, The New Republic, the New YorkTimes Book Review, Slate, and other publications. She has received two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen's Club of New York and the Academy Johnson & Johnson Excellence in Media Award. Her writing has appeared in “The Best American Political Writing” (2007 and 2009) and “The Best Food Writing” (2008). She is an Emerson Fellow at New America.
Reading List: Larissa MacFarquhar recommends David Grann’s “Trial by Fire,” about Cameron Todd Willingham.
All Work
- A Reporter at Large
The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care
Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience.
- Profiles
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Comes to Terms with Global Fame
As her subjects have expanded, her audience has, too, but visibility has its drawbacks.
- Annals of Thought
The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark
The tools we use to help us think—from language to smartphones—may be part of thought itself.
- A Reporter at Large
Where the Small-Town American Dream Lives On
As America’s rural communities stagnate, what can we learn from one that hasn’t?
- Page-Turner
The Gentleness of John Ashbery
Ashbery liked that each reader read his poems differently, that they were refracted through many heads and notions.
September 5, 2017
- A Reporter at Large
When Should a Child Be Taken from His Parents?
In family court, judges must decide whether the risks at home outweigh the risks of separating a family.
- Dept. of Higher Education
Building a Prison-to-School Pipeline
Formerly incarcerated undergrads started a group on campus to offer mentoring, support, and advocacy to other onetime inmates.
- News Desk
Learning Trump Won, in West Virginia
West Virginians are used to being different from the rest of the country, but in this case they were more mainstream than they knew.
November 10, 2016
- A Reporter at Large
In the Heart of Trump Country
West Virginia used to vote solidly Democratic. Now it belongs to Trump. What happened?
- A Reporter at Large
A Tender Hand in the Presence of Death
The daily work of a hospice nurse, who treats the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of people at the most vulnerable point of their lives.
