Meeting the man behind Violentacrez, the Reddit persona responsible for forums filled with racist and pornographic content like “Creepshots” and “Jailbait”: When I called Brutsch that Wednesday afternoon and told him I knew who he was, I was a little taken aback by how calm he remained during our intense but civil hour-long conversation. I […]
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The first in a two-part series deconstructing the case against Michael Morton, who was convicted in 1987 of killing his wife but has maintained his innocence: Michael was breathing hard. ‘Is my son okay?’ he asked. ‘He’s fine,’ Boutwell said. ‘He’s at the neighbors’.’ ‘How about my wife?’ The sheriff was matter-of-fact. ‘She’s dead,’ he […]
By now you’ve probably seen our Longreads Member Picks—a mix of outstanding magazine stories, book chapters and more from the best writers and publishers in the world. You may have already subscribed to Longreads—and if you have, thank you. Your financial support is what allows us to keep Longreads running every day, offering great recommendations and […]
Our latest Exclusive comes from author Elissa Schappell, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and co-founder and editor at large of Tin House, which is where she published “How the Light Gets In”—a story about a life changed by seizures. See it here. p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member.
[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter: September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will […]
A woman who grew up near her grandmother’s farm with a large extended family recalls her childhood, and how things will be different for her children and their children as her family shrinks. (A Best American Essays 2012 notable essay): This shift is evident in our family. Counting spouses and not counting our cousins’ kids, […]
An illiterate child from a small town in India falls asleep on a train and ends up lost in Calcutta, unable to find his way back home. Twenty-five years later, while living with his adoptive family in Australia, he locates his lost hometown using memories and Google Earth: This was it, the name of the […]
The billionaire oilman had the perfect plan to help his alma mater Oklahoma State University raise money—by taking out $10 million life insurance policies on him and 27 other people: Unfortunately for Oklahoma State, Pickens, and the other men and women who thought their demise would benefit their favorite university, Gift of a Lifetime has […]
A pool salesman struggles to cope with a weak economy, which has forced him to rethink the meaning of the American Dream: ‘You can’t be too safe or too smart about money with the economy now,’ Tyler said. ‘I want to save up and make the smart investments.’ ‘You’ll make them,’ Frank said, nodding. ‘I […]
Inside the life of Somali refugees in Nairobi, Kenya: The heartland of that exodus is the vast refugee camp complex centered around Dadaab town in Kenya’s North Eastern Province—at 450,000 people and growing at the rate of over 1,000 people a day, the camp is Kenya’s third largest city, and the biggest refugee camp in […]
A writer debates his dad about the legacy of Baby Boomers: Do they deserve blame for our current economic situation? You could call this anecdote Exhibit A in my father’s defense of the boomers, which he offered over coffee on the first day of our weeklong dispute. It boils down to a claim that he […]
An excerpt from Howe’s new book on how internal arguments, drugs, failed feminism, and the exploitation of minority characters in comic books and the freelance writers and artists who drew them, changed Marvel Comics during the late ’60s and early ’70s: ‘I was just as crazy as everybody else post-Watergate, post-Vietnam,’ said Starlin, whose hobbies […]
Paul Auster opens up about his life and work: Academics theorize endlessly about Auster and his literary motivations, labeling him everything from a New York Jewish hunger artist to a clever semiotician whose every decision — down to the color of the notebook his protagonists choose to write in — is fraught with symbolism. Auster […]
A writer and his wife participate in a centuries-old Scandinavian tradition known as “Wife-Carrying,” a sport where male competitors carry a female teammate while racing through an obstacle course: And then my wife and I are 15 yards up the hill, and I am breathing hard, making it work. This isn’t so bad, I think. […]
An oral history of the Beltway sniper attacks that occurred during three weeks in October 2002. Ten people were killed, three people were injured, and many people were too afraid to leave their homes: Iran Brown, victim, now 23: ‘I remember every detail, down to what I ate for breakfast: chocolate-chip waffles. My aunt drove […]
Harper Reed went from running a T-shirt community to running digital operations for Obama’s reelection campaign. Inside the team’s top-secret efforts to refine voter targeting to a granular (or: “creepy”) level: By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just […]
Did the feds break up a dangerous terror plot in Cleveland—or did they manufacture a threat from a group of impressionable Occupy followers? The crux of the Cleveland Five’s defense will likely rest on whether Azir’s aggressive role in the crime constituted entrapment – a strategy which Baxter’s defense attorney John Pyle foreshadowed at an […]
A rant about Grizzly Bear and writing with an audience in mind austinkleon: There’s a good profile of the band Grizzly Bear by Nitsuh Abebe with the headline-as-question: “Grizzly Bear Members Are Indie-Rock Royalty, But What Does That Buy Them in 2012?” Spoiler: not much. Everyone who’s interested in making a living in the music […]
A writer examines issues of racism he witnessed while growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, and running a grocery store with his father: When I went back for an event for my college fraternity, I introduced myself to one of the new guys, my brother who is the first ‘black guy’ in my fraternity. When I […]
Our latest Exclusive comes from writer and Longreads Member Maria Bustillos, whose own work has been featured on Longreads in the past. She’s chosen Chapter 8 from Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Becker’s 1975 book Escape from Evil. See it here. p.s. You can support Longreads—and get more exclusives like this—by becoming a member.
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