Best of 2016: Arts & Culture Writing

At the time of Dangerous, Michael Jackson's universal popularity was on par with pizza and the polio vaccine. It was the last time that Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson.

The fake “reality” of professional wrestling has become the new norm — from entertainment to politics, and everywhere in between.

“The Underground Railroad” is a brilliant reimagining of antebellum America.

When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. “Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.” It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent...

How Tumblr's most popular teen comedy geniuses struck it rich—then lost it all.

In the decadent 1980s, the media shipped novelists Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, Donna Tartt and Jill Eisenstadt into a loose-knit group known as the "literary brat pack."

When Saeed Jones smiles, he lights up the whole room. (His side-eye, similarly, is chilling.) When we first met in 2012, I knew him as a brilliant poet who loved Toni Morrison. (The author of Sula, Song of Solomon, is how—over a sticky, unsteady table in Botanica—we first connected.) Since then his light has illuminated...