Author Archives

Longreads
The staff of Longreads.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Untangling the Knot: My Search for Democracy in the Modern Family

Sabine Heinlein | Longreads | October 28, 2014 | 16 minutes (3,966 words)

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Benjamin C. Bradlee: 1921-2014

Legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who led the newspaper for 26 years and oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, died Oct. 21 at the age of 93.

“There is nothing like daily journalism! Best damn job in the world!” Ben Bradlee said, as he happily slammed a folded newspaper on his desk one morning in 1985 after I wrote a story that had his phone ringing off the hook.

Ben loved to stir things up, loved to get people talking.

— Some tributes: Editor Mary Jordan remembers what it was like to get praise from Bradlee. Former managing editor Leonard Downing reflects on working with Bradlee, and novelist Ward Just describes his relationship with Bradlee.

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo: The New York Times

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

The Art of Arrival: Rebecca Solnit on Travel and Friendship

Rebecca Solnit | Orion | Summer 2014 | 20 minutes (4,780 words)

OrionOur latest Longreads Exclusive comes from Rebecca Solnit and Orion magazinesubscribe to the magazine or donate for more great stories like this.
Get a free trial issue

Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks)

[ 1. ]

The word “journey” used to mean a single day’s travels, and the French word for day, jour, is packed neatly inside it, like a single pair of shoes in a very small case. Maybe all journeys should be imagined as a single day, short as a trip to the corner or long as a life in its ninth decade. This way of thinking about it is a;rmed by the t-shirts made for African-American funerals in New Orleans and other places that describe the birth date and death date of the person being commemorated as sunrise and sunset. One day. Read more…

Interview: Simon Rich on Guilt, Humor Writing, and Being the Worst Person Ever

Jessica Gross | Longreads | Oct. 2014 | 17 minutes (4,290 words)

By the time Simon Rich graduated from Harvard, where he served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, he had a two-book deal from Random House. Less than a decade later, the humorist has written four short story collections and two comic novels. He also spent four years writing for Saturday Night Live (he was the youngest writer SNL ever hired) and about two years at Pixar, and is now at work on a film and a television series.

Rich’s level of productivity, impressive as it is, takes a backseat to the quality of his humor writing. His stories are crystalline, eccentric, and universally hilarious. Many of the stories in his new collection, Spoiled Brats are built on an unusual premise, or told from a surprising angle. In “Animals,” a hamster narrates his wretched existence as a class pet at an elementary school. In “Gifted,” a mother insists that her son—born as a monster, with horns and a tail—is exceptional. And in “Distractions,” a writer believes the whole world is out to get him, and they really are.

* * *

How old were you when you started actively, seriously writing?

Well, I always loved to write. As early as kindergarten, I plagiarized Roald Dahl stories that I would try to pass off as my own. But I think it sort of shifted around when I was 17. That’s when I started writing every single day, whether or not I had an idea. Until then, I would only sit down and write a story if one occurred to me, and then I started to wake up every single day and write for a few hours whether or not I had anything worthwhile to say.

Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Coming Oct. 29, NYC: A Night of Storytelling with This Land Press

Present

A special night of storytelling with
This Land

Featuring:

Mark Singer (The New Yorker)

Rilla Askew (author, “Fire in Beulah”)

Ginger Strand (author, “Inventing Niagara”)

Kiera Feldman (writer, “Grace in Broken Arrow,” “This Is My Beloved Son”)

Marcos Barbery (journalist and documentarian, writer, “From One Fire”)

Wednesday, Oct. 29th, 7:00 p.m.
Free Admission


Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012

RSVP on our Facebook page

Bios

Mark Singer has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1974. Singer’s account of the collapse of the Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City appeared in The New Yorker in 1985 and was published as a book, Funny Money.

Rilla Askew is an Oklahoma-born writer and author of the novel Fire in Beulah, set against the backdrop of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

Ginger Strand is the author of Inventing Niagara, the untold story of America’s waterfall. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Harper’s, The Believer, The Iowa Review, and the New York Times. Her articles for This Land magazine span fracking, Oklahoma’s water wars, and homicidal truck drivers.

Kiera Feldman is a Brooklyn-based reporter whose story “Grace in Broken Arrow” earned Longreads’ Best Non-Fiction article of the year in 2012. She’s written for n+1, The New York Times, Mother Jones, and a number of other publications.

Marcos Barbery is a journalist and documentarian. His This Land article “From One Fire” tells the story of an unlikely civil rights leader in the Cherokee Nation.

Photo by Jesse Chan-Norris (Flickr)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…