An expose on the Maine Department of Correction Industries woodshop and other prison-based businesses like it, which frame their exploitive inmate manufacturing programs as rehabilitative when in reality they’re more like state-sanctioned slavery.
Sari Botton
Posted inEditor's Pick
Can Love Sparked at Burning Man Last in Everyday Life?
While grieving her brother’s suicide, Maria Finn went to Burning Man and fell in love. Afterward, she learned why festival regulars caution against making big decisions or commitments until at least three months back into “default life.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Wrapping the Sunday Paper for the Last Time
As a teen in Cincinnati in the 90s, Andrew Bockhold hated having to give up much of each weekend to help his father out with his paper route. In this personal essay, he looks back with new appreciation for a business than helped his family survive, before it was shut down.
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Want to Persuade You to Care About Other People
After successfully convincing her conservative, Jewish grandfather that affirmative action is necessary and valid, Danielle Tcholakian commits to trying to get through to people who think differently than she does — as a journalist, and as a person in the world.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
‘Is This Gonna Happen Every Day in Charlottesville?’
A black mother wrestles with having to explain the violence in Charlottesville to her six-year-old daughter.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The ‘Creative Class’ Were Just the Rich All Along
Urban theorist Richard Florida seems to have realized he was wrong about the broad benefits of attracting creatives to depressed cities.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Talking to My Daughter About Charlottesville
“Once your children know that even one person detests their bones and breath, they know.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Richard Florida is Sorry
Sam Wetherell analyzes urban theorist Richard Florida’s apparent about-face on the benefits of luring members of the “creative class” to depressed cities in need of revitalization. Governmental leaders in major cities around the world have used Florida’s 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Pregnant, then Ruptured
In this personal essay, Joanna Petrone recalls the medical abortion for an ectopic pregnancy that led to the rupturing of one of her fallopian tubes, followed by emergency surgery. She also reflects on the kinds of legislation that can — and has — kept women from being able to terminate life-threatening pregnancies like hers.
Posted inBlog Post, Longreads News, Nonfiction
Longreads Essays Editor Sari Botton’s Guide to Pitching
What I’m looking for, what are the best ways to pitch, and what you can expect from working with me.