Los Angeles Plays Itself By David L. Ulin Feature In this land of constant reinvention, a longtime resident walks the streets to understand what the city was and what it’s becoming.
A Citizen Is Obliged To Listen By Ankita Chakraborty Feature When a refugee flees to another country and claims asylum, she is, in effect, petitioning the state to listen to her story.
Hanif Abdurraqib on Loving A Tribe Called Quest By Jonny Auping Feature “I wasn’t interested in writing the definitive book on A Tribe Called Quest. I was trying to write the definitive book on a single arc of fandom.”
When Accepting Support Feels Like Becoming a Burden By Catherine Cusick Highlight When Ijeoma Oluo offers to buy her aging white mother a home, her mother worries she’s become a burden.
‘Every Woman Writer Feels Like She’s Starting Over Without Any Guides’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Ann Leckie talks about “The Raven Tower,” the erasure of women writers from the canon, the privilege inherent to ‘the anxiety of influence,’ and the power of tradition.
‘The Most Versatile Criminal In History’ By Jonny Auping Feature Journalist Evan Ratliff has uncovered the shocking reach of Paul Le Roux’s criminal enterprise — a global network of pawns, most of whom were unaware of the full extent of the empire.
Notes on a Shipwreck By Longreads Feature On Lampedusa, history is never far from the islanders’ thoughts, and they are preoccupied by its contradictions. Is Lampedusa a stop on a long journey, or is it a graveyard? Does every fence need a hole in it?
Maybe What We Need Is … More Politics? By Aaron Timms Feature Recent books by economists who hope to “save capitalism” dismiss popular ideas as “just politics.” But why assume the popular is the enemy of the good?
Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in British Music Writing By Longreads Feature The history of England’s fertile music press reveals as much about the opinionated English youth who created it as it does the music they covered in the second half of the 20th century.
‘What Would Social Media Be Like As the World Is Ending?’ By Jacob Silverman Feature In Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha,” a journalist who has survived Trump’s nuclear apocalypse gets an assignment from what’s left of the New York Times Magazine: find out what people were tweeting as the bombs fell.
Preparing for a Post-Roe America By Laura Barcella Feature Activist and author Robin Marty says the biggest threat facing women in a post-Roe America would be arrest, not death.
Mothers of the Future By Thea Prieto Feature In a new memoir, Sophia Shalmiyev attempts to reunite with her missing mother through scraps, signs, and surrogates.
This Month In Books: ‘This Is Really Not What I Want To Be Reading’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is jam-packed with scammers, censors, and … other books.
If You Were a Sack of Cumin By Longreads Feature In the midst of the Syrian Civil War, three grown siblings attempt to fulfill their father’s final wish. The journey is dangerous, but that’s no surprise; nowadays, death is always hard work.
‘Archive, Archive, Archive’: Valeria Luiselli on Reading In Order To Write By Lily Meyer Feature To write “Lost Children Archive,” Valeria Luiselli studied the refugee crisis “obliquely,” reading about other historical moments of children’s mass displacement, amassing a reader’s archive of loss.
Joe Scapellato on “The Made-Up Man” and the Myth of the Self By Kathryn Watson Feature In Scapellato’s new novel, a man is pulled into a noir detective mystery he doesn’t want to solve.
In Defense of Schadenfreude By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Tiffany Watt Smith argues that schadenfreude, the joy we derive from another’s misfortune, is just a natural part of the very complex emotional responses we have as human beings.
Writing for the Movies: A Letter from Hollywood, 1962 By Longreads Feature In this classic essay about a classic American art form, legendary screenwriter Daniel Fuchs reflects on his lifetime learning the trade.
‘I Believe That Silence Is Ineffective’: Devi S. Laskar on Invisibility and American Terror By Ruth LeFaive Feature Laskar’s debut novel imagines an alternate ending to an incident from her real life: When law enforcement agents raided her home, and confiscated her unfinished novel, what if she had refused to comply?
To Compromise With the Facts of Living By Bradley Babendir Feature In Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel “Bowlaway,” the past and future are mysteriously entangled.
Stalin’s Scheherazade By Longreads Feature An opportunistic literary caper became a lifelong con — with no possibility of escape.
The Precarity of Everything: On Millennial (Blacks and) Blues By Danielle Jackson Feature Reniqua Allen — the author of It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America — on Black millennials, millennial burnout, and hope in a time of uncertainty.
‘I Spent Two Years Researching Before I Wrote a Single Line’: Geeking Out With Marlon James By Adam Morgan Feature Man Booker winner Marlon James immersed himself in African myths and history, so he could use that world as a springboard for a new fantasy series.
Lean On By Longreads Feature A declaration of dependence, excerpted from Briallen Hopper’s new essay collection.
‘I Knew It Was Not My Correct Life, Because It Asked Me To Mute My Voice.’ By Jane Ratcliffe Feature Reema Zaman on deciding she would no longer live to please men, and how women’s self-esteem and self-love is a revolutionary act of dissent.
The Paths of Rhythm By Longreads Feature A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time.
The Pain of Loss, Through Centuries and Books By Michelle Weber Highlight “My father is dead, I said to myself, my father is dead. Again and again I said it, and still I failed to grasp what it meant.”
‘I Inherited Luck’: Bridgett M. Davis on Her Family’s Life in the Numbers By Sheila McClear Feature In a new memoir, novelist Bridgett M. Davis reveals that her mother was a Numbers operator in Detroit from the 1960s through the 1980s.
How Diderot’s Encyclopedia Challenged the King By Longreads Feature The encyclopedists’ plan to catalog knowledge seemed harmless enough. But what they intended was far more subversive: to restructure knowledge itself.
Edward Gorey: A Highly Conjectural Man By Bridey Heing Feature When asked if there was “anything people don’t understand” about him, Gorey responded: “Yes. No. Yes. No.” A new biography by Mark Dery attempts to sort myth from reality.
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