Happy is a Relative State By Longreads Feature “The rest of my life will always be entwined with rheumatoid arthritis. But it’s my choice to also be something more, to not feel sick, to still find those shadows of a dancer, which is to say tiny flecks of magic, within me.”
Judge a Book Not By its Gender By lisawhill Feature Lisa Whittington-Hill suggests there’s a distinct gender bias in celebrity memoirs. Where female celebrities are expected to expose all, male writers get to write about whatever they want.
Queens of Infamy: Boudicca By Anne Thériault Feature If you underestimate a woman determined to avenge violence against her daughters, prepare yourself to get sacked. On repeat.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Lost Album, Human Highway By David Gambacorta Feature How CSNY fumbled a chance to record their best album.
Shelved: Dr. Dre’s Detox By Tom Maxwell Feature Killer beats, huge hype, and failure to follow through.
Pop Culture Portrays OCD as a Blessing. It’s Not. By Krista Stevens Highlight “The Wall Street Journal recently used the headline ‘We All Need OCD Now’ for an article on COVID-19 … Finally, my debilitating mental illness has a timely hook!”
Why Mother Maybelle Carter’s Work Was Never Done By Krista Stevens Highlight “In a few years’ time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.”
“The Internet Is Inside Us”: Patricia Lockwood on the Portal, Twitter, and Her New Novel By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight In an interview at GQ, Patricia Lockwood talks about the perils of being extremely online.
Justin Townes Earl: The Saint of Lost Causes By Krista Stevens Highlight Fellow singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield, who frequently toured with Earle, described his gift more simply: “He was able to explain trouble better than most.”
Earl King Deserves His Due By Krista Stevens Highlight Earl King’s “discs were among the rare ones where the words were as important as the music, where blues guitar was balanced with second-line piano, and where the B-sides were as strong as the A-sides.”
Making Art Awash in Grief By Krista Stevens Highlight “In art and grief there are days you’re not proud of, days the emotions turn ugly, days the images don’t turn out the way you want. But that’s the human in us, and it belongs in the process. “
Shelved: Yoko Ono By Tom Maxwell Feature On Yoko Ono’s 1974 album “A Story,” and stepping out from behind the ever-present shadow of John Lennon.
Rush Drummer Neil Peart: Master Student By Krista Stevens Highlight Neil Peart “was brilliant enough to skip two grades, starting high school at 12. He began drum lessons, practicing for a full year without an actual kit.”
I Will Always Love You: A Dolly Parton Reading List By Alison Fishburn Reading List Happy birthday, Dolly Parton! Here are seven longreads about the American singer-songwriter.
‘We Told You So’: Revisiting the Bleak, Pandemic-Filled World of 12 Monkeys, 25 Years Later By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight “Gilliam does believe that the end of society may soon be upon us. The question for him is: What shape will the new one take?”
‘Everyone Benefits from a Frozen Arctic’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “The world should not, cannot, go back to business as usual without a clearer understanding and consciousness of how we live.”
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2021 By Longreads Feature Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 304 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2020. Here are his favorites.
Quarantine Brain: How ‘the Internet Became More Internet’ in 2020 By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Nothing made sense in 2020 — unless you were on the internet.
The Mormon Mommy Bloggers of Instagram By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Alexandra Tanner spent this weird year following Mormon mommy bloggers on Instagram.
‘Hue’s Hue’: Katy Kelleher’s Column on Color By Krista Stevens Highlight “Tyrian purple was a difficult color to manufacture. Thousands of snails were required to create a single ounce of dye.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Profiles By Krista Stevens Feature Here’s a selection of profiles that resonated with us this year.
Plastic’s Broken Promise By Krista Stevens Highlight “The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Arts and Culture By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Feature Our top editors’ picks in arts and culture writing this year.
“Over a Glass of Wine and a Pint on a Quiet Friday Night” By Krista Stevens Highlight “Impending parenthood makes you reconsider the context of your own upbringing, and puts the work your parents did into a new light.”
The Dark Side of Birding By Krista Stevens Highlight “Undeniably, eBird … brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.”
Loving Molly, and Mourning Her: A Husband’s Extraordinary Essay By Seyward Darby Highlight Blake Butler writes movingly about his late wife, poet Molly Brodak.
Longreads Best of 2020: Music Writing By Krista Stevens Feature Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.
A Fond Farewell to a Friend: the Arecibo Telescope By Krista Stevens Highlight “Exploring the cosmos is a way for us to know ourselves. Each time we look up, in some way we are making contact with each other, with our past, present, and future.”
‘Transforming Craft Into An Act of Protest’: Embroidery In Response to Femicide in Mexico By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight An embroidery collective in Mexico sews the stories of slain women.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Electric Guitar Pioneer By Krista Stevens Highlight “She wielded her guitar like a weapon and distorted the sound: a guitar technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the decades after.”
