“A friend who teaches at another university tells me that a new Yiddish word has been invented: oysgezoomt, ‘over-exposed to Zoom,’ as in ‘Ich bin azoy oysgezoomt!’ (‘I’m so done with Zoom!’)”
Writing
Posted inNonfiction
Scrap the To Do Lists
“If we’re lucky enough to be able to shelter in place and we’re not using that time to launch podcasts and personal projects and life-hack our way to some cargo-cult pastiche of normality, are we somehow letting the side down?”
Posted inNonfiction
On Watching Boys Play Music
“With a drink in my hand and earplugs responsibly in place, I’m very aware that I’ve spent more than half my life essentially standing in the same spot: off to one side of the stage (close but not too close), eyes forward, shifting weight from foot to foot.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Coastal Shelf
June Amelia Rose remembers coming out in her youth to a turbulent family as her mother died of cancer.
Posted inNonfiction
“The Anger of Women is an Earth-shattering Thing”: Lidia Yuknavitch on Resisting the Hero Narrative and the Body as a Generator of Stories.
“I’m going to say a blasphemous thing, which is we are so fucking done with the hero’s journey. It has been to our peril.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Blog Post, Books, Nonfiction, Reading List, Writing
8 Longreads by Will Storr on the Science of Storytelling
Eight must-read stories that investigate science, belief, and the human impulse to tell stories.
Posted inArts & Culture, Culture, Essays & Criticism, Story, Writing
Miami: A Beginning
Jessica Lynne remembers a long distance love affair that began in Miami and the Billie Holiday song that kept her company through the relationship’s transitions.
Posted inStory
Welcome to Hive
Hive is a new Longreads series about women and the music that has influenced them.
Posted inNonfiction
“What Do I Know To Be True?”: Emma Copley Eisenberg on Truth in Nonfiction, Writing Trauma, and The Dead Girl Newsroom
“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.”Â
Posted inNonfiction
Tar Bubbles
Melissa Matthewson remembers the flights of fancy that kept her company as a young girl, and bears witness to her daughter’s.