Our publisher Carmen Giménez speaks to Laura Marris, author of The Age of Loneliness, and Roger Reeves, most recently the author of Dark Days: Fugitive Essays about the role of the essayist and critic today. They discuss the intellectual's engagement with publics outside the page——classroom as mutual aid society, community science, oral history——and the idea of gap gardening. "Can we make space in the essay for people to hear themselves think?"