Welcome to Litsy!

In 2012, Sarah Ruhl was a distinguished author and playwright, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Max Ritvo, a student in her playwriting class at Yale University, was an exuberant, opinionated, and highly gifted poet. He was also in remission from pediatric cancer. Over the next four years�in which Ritvo�s illness returned and his health declined, even as his productivity bloomed�the two exchanged letters that spark with urgency, humor, and the desire for connection. Reincarnation, books, the afterlife as an Amtrak quiet car, good soup: in Ruhl and Ritvo�s exchanges, all ideas are fair, nourishing game, shared and debated in a spirit of generosity and love. �We�ll always know one another forever, however long ever is,� Ritvo writes. �And that�s all I want�is to know you forever.� Studded with poems and songs, Letters from Max is a deeply moving portrait of a friendship, and a shimmering exploration of love, art, mortality, and the afterlife.