Hanif Abdurraqib

1. Article · Aug 28, 2026 · Hanif Abdurraqib

   There’s No Place Like Group Chats (opens the original)

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   In the fall of 2024, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, I sat alone in a dim room, holding my cellphone’s flashlight over the cursive correspondence of the American poet and novelist Countee Cullen. I don’t tend to seek out the letters of famous writers, and I have no interest in the salacious details that can often be gleaned from such texts. I’m in it for the mundanity—the day-to-day delivery of plain information, occasionally ornamented with a flair of emotion.

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2. Article · Jul 31, 2026 · Hanif Abdurraqib

   Glen Hansard’s Street-Corner Stories (opens the original)

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   There’s a YouTube video I love of Glen Hansard standing on a rainy street in Dublin, wearing a black jacket and a scarf, cradling a guitar that shows signs of wear, which was something of a Hansard signature. He’s playing a cover of Van Morrison’s song “Astral Weeks,” and some people have stopped to stand in the rain with him, smiling as they stare at the man’s hands tearing up and down his instrument with incredible ferocity, the camera spinning in a circle as Hansard shouts out an

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3. Article · Jul 31, 2026 · Hanif Abdurraqib

   Glen Hansard’s Street-Corner Stories (opens the original)

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   Both as a young busker and as a famous singer-songwriter, Hansard understood how to make people stop and listen and feel one single thing.

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