Maggie Nelson is the author of many acclaimed books, most recently The Slicks (2025) and Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (2025). Previous works include Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024); the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021); the international bestseller The Argonauts (2015; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award); The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011); Bluets (2009; adapted for the stage by Katie Mitchell at the Royal Court Theatre of London); and The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2005). A recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “genius” fellowship, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her book The Argonauts was recently named by the New York Times as one of the best 100 books of the 21st century.
While at MacDowell, Nelson worked on a new book called The Transcendent Detective, which will be her 14th.
