[6][7][8] In addition to regularly writing for The New York Times, Kunkel has written for the magazines Granta, Dissent, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Believer, and The New Yorker.
Kunkel has written multiple short stories and book reviews for the print journal he started with friends from college and graduate school, n+1.
In the Fall 2004 issue, he published the short story "Horse Mountain," about an aging man.
[9] Much of Kunkel's work exhibits a preoccupation with global social justice and leftist politics, including the Marxist overview Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis, the Kirchner essay Argentinidad, and the anti-capitalist book The Commonist Manifesto.
Jay McInerney wrote in the New York Times Book Review that it was "The funniest and smartest coming-of-age novel in years.