‘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.”
‘Almost Home’: On Place, Legacy, Growing Up in Atlanta, and Symbols of White Supremacy By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight An essay on growing up in the South, legacy, and a place rooted in white supremacy.
The Rehab of Big Sky Country By Carolyn Wells Highlight “Daily treks in silence are an effective way to get anyone to reflect on their lives and consider what’s really important.”
The Mormon Mommy Bloggers of Instagram By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Alexandra Tanner spent this weird year following Mormon mommy bloggers on Instagram.
Longreads Best of 2020: Essays By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Feature A small sampling of standout essays published this year.
‘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.”
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.”
“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.”
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.
The Secrets of a Hidden Diary By Seyward Darby Highlight A hidden diary, a love story, and a mystery.
‘Anyone Can Walk in the Woods, But Who Truly Knows Them?’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Tristan McConnell writes about the forests of Mount Kenya, and the people there with a deep understanding of the land and the trees.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on Helping Elderly Black People to Vote in 1976 By Krista Stevens Highlight “I called out the names, and they’d tell me who they wanted to vote for. Then, very carefully, I put my finger by each name they’d chosen.”
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.”
‘My Tongue Swallowing the Taste of Home Soil’: On Filipino Food, Family, and Identity By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight “Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.”
‘Writing Was a Way to Have My Say’: An Interview with Author Sejal Shah By Krista Stevens Highlight “I didn’t know at first what I was doing. I was just trying to represent the inside of the feeling.”
‘These Were His Mountains, After All’: Remembering One’s Father While Cycling in the Swiss Alps By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight James Jung thought he rode the winding narrow roads of the Alps to memorialize his dad. He was wrong.
The Power of a Judith Krantz Sex Scene By sanderskristin Feature A ‘90s romance novel offers a glimpse of queer possibility and illuminates the complications of writing about queer love.
Summer Mother By Michael Gonzales Feature Michael A. Gonzales recounts the life lessons of a favorite auntie.
Find Yourself By Elizabeth Isadora Gold Feature From way back in ’80s Philadelphia, Elizabeth Isadora Gold remembers her first writing teacher, the mail art artist/lyricist Stu Horn.
Out There: On Not Finishing By Devin Feature What happens if the stories we tell ourselves about our lives leave us lonely, wrestling with meaning?
Death as a Work of Art By Krista Stevens Highlight “He tried to explain that the tomb was his final creative act, one that he would make with love, as he had made ceramics daily for the past forty-four years.”
How to Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries By Irina Dumitrescu Feature A professor embarks on a six-month binge of celebrity-led online courses.
Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral By Yxta Maya Murray Feature In and around Los Angeles, natural and man-made disasters have been inextricable for almost two centuries.
“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?” By Osama Shehzad Feature When your name is Osama and you’re living in post-9/11 America, you always know The Question is coming.
What’s Love Got to Do With It? By Alice Driver Feature “Although the world has made space for more diverse women, we are still expected to fill the role of the one who wants to be loved, to be a mother when perhaps we only ever wanted to paint, to write, to explore the world alone, on our own terms.”
‘The Sea and Sky Decide What They Will Allow’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “I’m working on a book about Arctic explorers, and that means swimming in a sea of sorrow.”
Marmalade: A Very British Obsession By Olivia Potts Feature Captain Scott took jars to the Antarctic with him, and Edmund Hillary took one up Everest. Marmalade is part of the British national myth. Livvy Potts wants to know why.
In Absentia By matthewembremner Feature A meditation on the nature of grief, at a time when the whole world seems to be grieving.
‘You Could Literally See Our Shit From Space’: The Broken Bowels of Beirut By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Beirut’s disintegrating sewage system and corrupt politics have put its residents in a shitty situation.
‘Breonna deserved better’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “She is more than an incident report that didn’t offer her dignity in death, to tell the truth of her murder.”
