Sometimes, well, maybe more than just sometimes, we’re our own worst enemy. On the ever-winding road to finding happiness or love or fulfillment, it’s often self-criticism, bad habits and insecurities ...

While pregnant, the poet and novelist JoAnna Novak embarked on a grant-supported three weeks in Taos, N.M., to write a book about the monastic painter Agnes Martin. The result, “Contradiction Days,” ...