ORDER: Reality Hunger: On Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (Arrowsmith Press), a monograph first published as a three-part essay in Los Angeles Review of Books, featured in both Lit Hub Daily and the PEN USA blog The Mark.
“What Obligation,” a critical essay on how writing accrues responsibility, in AGNI 104.
“The Editing of Translated Literature: A Renga,” cowritten with Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, in World Literature Today’s Centennial Issue.
“Mattering,” a critical essay on the relevance of imaginative writing in this era fixated on data, in AGNI 102. Cited as Notable in The Best American Essays 2026.
“The Page and Beyond,” a critical essay on the role of the “political” in contemporary writing, in AGNI 100. Cited as Notable in The Best American Essays 2025.
“Looking Out for Humanity,” a critical essay examining the relationship between “literature” and the present and future of generative AI, in AGNI 98. Cited as Notable in The Best American Essays 2024.
“On the Fraught Subject of Value,” a critical essay, in AGNI 96, reprinted in slightly different form at Literary Hub under the title “What Makes Writing Valuable?”
“White Price Comfort,” a personal essay, in The Continental online.
“A Few Thoughts on Truth and Fiction,” a critical essay, in AGNI 94.
An entry in Goethe-Institut’s “Day-Afterthoughts” project, which solicited responses to the Covid predicament and what it might portend for our fragile public life, at goethe.de. Reprinted at Three Quarks Daily.
“The Peculiarities of Literary Meaning,” a critical essay, in AGNI 91. Special Mention in the 2022 Pushcart anthology.
“Losing Stephen Dixon,” a personal essay, in AGNI Online.
“In Uniform,” a personal essay, in Consequence. Special Mention in the 2019 Pushcart anthology.
“You Mean, Like This?” a personal essay, in Solstice. A video of its debut at Literary Firsts in Cambridge, Mass., was reposted at Three Quarks Daily.
“Knausgaard and the Meaning of Fiction,” a critical essay, in Electric Literature.
“Introduction to The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction,” with E. C. Osondu, in AGNI 72, and—another part of the portfolio—“The Visual Language of Victor Ekpuk,” in AGNI Online.
“Crucibles,” an AGNI column: “Report on a Report” (AGNI 64), “‘Let Us Imagine’” (AGNI 65), “The Orchestration of Surprise” (AGNI 67), “Intimations of Randomness” (AGNI 69), “Walser Before & After” (AGNI 73), and “Is Knausgaard for Real?” (AGNI 81).
“Contradiction and Character,” an essay exploring the role of contradiction in literary character, in The Writer’s Chronicle.
“Fabulously Real,” an essay exploring realism and fabulism as operative concepts, in AGNI 59. Reprinted in Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. Special mention in the 2006 Pushcart anthology.
CONVERSATIONS AND REVIEWS
Video: “Conversation with Sándor Jászberényi,” Hungarian story writer and war correspondent, about Russia’s war on Ukraine (with a brief written introduction), in AGNI Online. Reposted at Three Quarks Daily.
“Conversations: E. C. Osondu and William Pierce,” in Critical Flame. Reprinted at Three Quarks Daily.
“Josh Weil and William Pierce: A Conversation,” in Tin House online.
“The Gift,” a review of Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock, in The Cincinnati Review.
“Interview with Askold Melnyczuk,” in Glimmer Train. Excerpts appeared in eleven issues of Writers Ask.