Life Advice from Jazz Genius Sonny Rollins By Krista Stevens Highlight “Live your life now in a positive way. Help people if you can. Don’t hurt people. That works perfectly for me, man.”
“What Do I Know To Be True?”: Emma Copley Eisenberg on Truth in Nonfiction, Writing Trauma, and The Dead Girl Newsroom By Jacqueline Alnes Feature “We were interested in dead girls, but so interested in them that we were trying to do the opposite of what had been done before.”
‘I Want Every Sentence To Be Doing Work’: An Interview with Miranda Popkey By Zan Romanoff Feature “Something I did learn writing this book is that being impressed by something doesn’t mean you should try and do it.”
Vivian Gornick on ‘Political Activism as a Path Toward a Coherent Self’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “But writing itself, living a life defined by work and intellect rather than love or marriage, became her primary feminist commitment.”
Longreads Best of 2019: Profiles 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 profiles.
‘By Choice, and Not By Choice…Time Is Going To Change You.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Nina MacLaughlin discusses her retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “[In] my very vague high school memories…there was no discussion of the fact that this book is just rape after rape after rape.”
‘I Was Being Used in Slivers and Slices’: On Feminism at Odds With Evangelical Faith By Jane Ratcliffe Feature “I wasn’t unified in my being. I wasn’t able to bring my whole self to the table,” says Cameron Dezen Hammon about her life as a worship leader for an evangelical megachurch.
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
Unearthing the Story: An Interview with Peter Hessler By Frank Bures Feature The New Yorker writer describes his career’s circuitous route, from his start as a struggling fiction writer to becoming a China correspondent, and now the author of a new book about the Arab Spring.
‘Writing This Book Was a Weird Séance ’: An Interview With Deborah Levy By Tobias Carroll Feature “If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
Korean Director Bong Joon-ho on How to Laugh in the Face of Horror By Krista Stevens Highlight Korean director Bong Joon-ho on his new film, Parasite
‘I Went Quiet…and That Allowed Me To Understand’: The Life of a Molecatcher By Tobias Carroll Feature Marc Hamer discusses life, death, and the lost art of catching a mole.
“We’re All Still Cooking…Still Raw at the Core”: An Interview with Jacqueline Woodson By Adam Morgan Feature “When I look at that dress and how much intention went into the making of it…it’s like we want to have something that can’t be destroyed, because so much of the past has been destroyed…”
Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
‘People Can Become Houses’ By Danielle Jackson Feature In her debut memoir, Sarah Broom builds her “obsession” with her family home — destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina — into a story of how families decide who they are, how they got here, and how they reconstruct themselves over and over again.
Truly Seeing the River: An Interview with Writer Boyce Upholt By Aaron Gilbreath Feature Writing about the culture and beauty of the Mississippi Delta requires seeing the mighty river as more than a line of water.
‘To Be Polite By Ignoring the Obvious’: Jess Row on Unpacking Whiteness in Literature By Morgan Jerkins Feature “I was looking for texts that seem to go the extra mile in hiding something — texts that almost seem to be begging to be interpreted in terms of what’s not being said.”
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland” By Ryan Chapman Feature ‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
‘Victims Become This Object of Fascination… This Silent Symbol.’ By Jonny Auping Feature Rachel Monroe talks about the pitfalls of the true crime genre. “I had this feeling like I can see the whole thing and nobody else understands… That’s a real trap that we as reporters can fall in.”
‘The Survivor’s Edit’: Bassey Ikpi on Memory, Truth, and Living with Bipolar II By Naomi Elias Feature Bassey Ikpi discusses writing about mental illness. “I could count on the morning. It became the thing that existed without my input… without determining whether or not I was worthy of it.”
Looking for Carolina Maria de Jesus By Tari Ngangura Feature For a brief period in the 1960s, the Afro-Brazilian author of the memoir “Child of the Dark” was one of the most well-known writers in the world.
Images Present Themselves: A Conversation With Photographer Burk Uzzle By Tom Maxwell Feature Some of the most iconic images get captured when you’re just out for a stroll. What you do with these images is a political act.
‘Horror Is a Soothing Genre … It’s Upfront About How Scary It Is To Be a Woman.’ By Laura Barcella Feature Sady Doyle discusses the connection she draws between society’s monstrous treatment of women and woman’s archetypal monstrosity.
‘We Live in an Atmosphere of General Inexorability’: An Interview with Jia Tolentino By Hope Reese Feature Jia Tolentino talks about what kinds of personalities thrive online, why she is suspicious of her own self-narrative, and the pervading sense that everything’s spiraling out of control.
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: ‘The Basket Isn’t a Metaphor, It’s an Example’ By Colin Dickey Feature The editors of “Shapes of Native Nonfiction” talk about the craft of writing, the politics of metaphor, and resisting the exploitation of trauma.
‘My Teachers Said We Weren’t Allowed To Use Them.’ By Tobias Carroll Feature How Cecelia Watson learned to stop worrying and love the semicolon.
‘I Surprise Myself With This Refusal To Let Go’: Kate Zambreno on the ‘Ghostly Correspondence’ By Tobias Carroll Feature “I thought for sure, I’ll never write about Rilke again. I’m done with Rilke! I’m sick of Rilke! Rilke — no more. But then the other day … I just started researching something about Rilke.”
Understanding Craig Stecyk By Joe Donnelly Feature Stecyk defined Southern California’s subversive, skateboard aesthetic and changed art and culture in the process, but that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it.
What Is Elizabeth Rush Reading? : Books on Antarctic Adventure, Ice, Motherhood By Dana Snitzky Commentary “I sometimes wonder if this continent of ice is begging for a different kind of story to be told about it.”
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