Making Something Out of Nothing With a Scratch and a Hope: The Ballad of Shovels and Rope By Krista Stevens Highlight “We had nothing to lose,” Cary Ann said. “Fuck it. Band. Family. Let’s give it a shot. . . . Handshake, spit on it. If it gets too nasty we’ll cut and run.”
Menace Too Society By Soraya Roberts Feature Cancel culture suggests we can change the world from the outside in, but the misogyny and racism are coming from inside the house.
N.K. Jemisin: ‘I am still going to write what I am going to write.’ By Krista Stevens Highlight Hells to the yes, says I.
Happily Never After By Soraya Roberts Feature By protecting ourselves and no one else, we destroy ourselves along with everyone else.
William Gibson on How Science Fiction Portrays Reality By Krista Stevens Highlight “Every fiction about the future is like an ice-cream cone,” Gibson says, “melting as it moves into the future.”
Violence Girl By Longreads Feature How a young bilingual Latina became one of punk’s enduring icons and helped create a new musical universe.
What Brings True Happiness: the Booze or the Bonding? By Krista Stevens Highlight “But there’s nothing wrong with a nudge toward examining the difference between what makes us happy and what is merely habitual.”
How Bagel Makers’ Union Local 338 Beat NYC’s “Kosher Nostra” By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘“A bagel,” the newspaper of record explained in 1960, “is an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.”’
When Media Miscalculations Pivot Talented People Out of a Job By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Pivoting to video is only one of many ways media workers lose their jobs, but it’s still a horrible way.
Still Waters By Soraya Roberts Feature The muted response to Todd Haynes’s “Dark Waters” is depressingly similar to our culture’s muted response to climate change
Longreads Best of 2019: Music Writing By Longreads Reading List We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in music writing.
Wonderful Things: The Kid Creole and the Coconuts Story By Michael Gonzales Feature Combining island sounds with stylish clothes and an unforgettable stage presence, one of New York City’s most original bands helped influence 1980s pop culture, and they never sacrificed their unclassifiable artistic vision.
Purging the Unhealthy Value System of the American Literary World By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight It’s time writers free themselves from concepts like “break out books” and “making it.”
Longreads Best of 2019: Arts and Culture By Longreads Commentary We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in arts and culture.
The Story of Salvador’s Banda Didá By Tari Ngangura Feature In a country with violent history and violent politics, Brazil’s first all-female, Afro-Brazilian percussion group drums and dances and changes lives.
All Hail the Rat King By Adrian Daub Feature From Martin Luther to The Nutcracker, Germany’s original national nightmare was a tangled knot of writhing rats.
In Praise of Del Amitri’s Album Waking Hours By Longreads Feature Some albums make it hard to separate the music from the experience of listening to it.
Bully for You By Soraya Roberts Feature Women with power have the capacity to silence women with less — and they wield it. Why can’t they see that?
Thou Shalt Not Mess With a Mom in a “Mamacita Needs a Margarita” Sweater By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight “This mom runs on caffeine, wine, and Amazon Prime” is a funny t-shirt slogan, but there is a serious social phenomenon behind it.
How Jazz Pianist Erroll Garner Fought for His Rights By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight When Columbia Records breached one of their big star’s contracts back in the 1950s, he sued and won.
Let Me Show You the World By Iman Sultan Feature Almost everything you think you know about Aladdin is wrong.
Willie Nelson’s 50-year Love Affair with Trigger, His Faithful Guitar By Krista Stevens Highlight “A guitar sounds better as it gets older, just like a Stradivarius does.”
Under the Influence: Watch(wo)men By Soraya Roberts Feature We watch the (women) influencers watching the (heavily female) influencing industry, but the men aren’t entirely in the dark.
How Mister Rogers Found Inspiration in the Everyday By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘“I think that how we were first loved — or not — has a great deal to do with what we create and how,” Fred once told me.’
Stumbling Into Joy By Kate Hopper Feature The electric bass chose her, but it took 44 years to heed the call.
Every One of Us Is Other: Looking Back on Representation in “Heavenly Creatures” 25 Years Later By Alex Difrancesco Feature Alex DiFrancesco reflects on Peter Jackson’s nuanced approach to representation in the critically acclaimed film.
Under the Influence: Deeper Than Beauty By Soraya Roberts Feature Influencers who break type, like Mina Gerges or Jakiya Brown, have more than just an image. They have a story — and a plan.
A Town Split By a Play About the 1980s AIDS Epidemic By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Sometimes art can challenge viewers enough to change them. Sometimes art just makes the narrow-minded angry.
Why Lhasa de Sela Matters By Longreads Feature Raised in a school bus by itinerant hippie parents, with one foot in Mexico and one in the US, the singer blossomed into her true multicultural self in bilingual Montreal.
