A personal essay in which A.M. Homes — who ten years ago published The Mistress’s Daughter, a memoir about meeting her birth parents — reports on the experience of recently being given her long lost adoption file, and the effects of the information on her understanding of her origins.
Sari Botton
Posted inEditor's Pick
Cast by Chronic Illness Into a Limiting Role
A personal essay in which Maris Kreizman recalls having her dreams of attending performing arts camp — not to mention her Broadway ambitions — dashed by juvenile diabetes, and illness she refuses to be defined by.
Posted inEditor's Pick
When a Mother and Daughter Reverse Roles
A personal essay in which Marlene Adelstein looks a her obsession with an orphaned sea otter and realizes it’s helping her process her grief over her Alzheimers-afflicted mom.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Much is Too Much to Save a Dying Cat?
A personal essay in which author s.e. smith ponders why in seeking treatment for dying pets we tend to postpone the inevitable, inadvertently prolonging their suffering .
Posted inEditor's Pick
To the Lady Who Mistook Me For the Help at the National Book Awards
A personal essay by poet Patrick Rosal — an excerpt of We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America, edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page. The piece is framed as a letter to a white woman who mistook him for a server at the black-tie National Book Awards gala, which he […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
The He’s-Got-to-Be-the-Help-Because-He’s-Brown Mistake
Patrick Rosal writes an open letter to a woman who mistook him for a waiter at the National Book Awards.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Decriminalization: A Love Story
In a ranging piece funded by the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, journalist Susana Ferreira reports on the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal, where since 2001, addiction has been treated more like an illness than a crime.
Posted inBlog Post, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
An Unapologetic Plea for Your Help Funding More Personal Essays
Longreads’ Essays Editor on the importance of budgeting for personal narratives.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Would Sarah Polley Do?
Anna Silman profiles actor and director Sarah Polley, on the occasion of the premiere of her Netflix miniseries, “Alias Grace,” an adaptation of a 1996 novel by Margaret Atwood.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Doctor Will See You Now
A personal essay in which Sarah Miller eulogizes her mother’s black sheep brother.