Senior Editor at Longreads

Cheri Lucas Rowlands is a founding editor at Automattic and has worked on Longreads since 2014. Stories she’s edited have won ASJA Awards and a Pushcart Prize, been named a James Beard Award finalist, and received notable mentions in Best American Essays and The Best Women’s Travel Writing. Writers have landed agents and book deals from pieces they’ve worked on with Cheri. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College and lives in California.

She reads and edits stories across all subjects, and especially enjoys essays about the internet and technology that remind us of our shared humanity, pieces exploring identity, place, and home, and deep dives into your obsessions. She is drawn to personal essays carried by a unique voice, and loves collaborating with writers on reported essays with strong personal narratives. She loves fresh, unexpected, and quirky, and right now wants to publish work that brings joy and delight.

Please submit polished drafts for personal essays and detailed pitches for reported stories that show a specific angle into your subject. To get a sense of what Cheri reads and edits, browse these editors’ picks and original features she’s commissioned or written over the years.

Cheri’s recent editors’ picks

No iPad Till After Dinner, Mom

Jessica Lucas | New York | October 21, 2026 | 4,426 words

“Seniors are spending more time than ever on their slop-filled feeds. It’s their adult children’s job to save them.”

Keeping Up Appearances

Andie Eisen | Los Angeles Review of Books | October 28, 2026 | 3,278 words

“The women taking over the funeral industry.”

Traveling Route 66 in the Age of Data Centers

Jesse Wright | Current Affairs | October 26, 2026 | 2,947 words

“Driving through America’s back roads, the emptiness of the information superhighways comes into sharp relief.”

You Finally Got a Wikipedia Page. Then It Vanished.

Duncan Fyfe | Wired | October 26, 2026 | 3,530 words

“Every day, Wikipedia biographies of living people are flagged for deletion because the subjects are not ‘notable’ enough. How do these poor souls take the news?”

Benchma(r)king

James Bridle | Emergence Magazine | October 14, 2026 | 4,109 words

“James Bridle experiments with combining their practical carpentry skills and the abundant theoretical knowledge of AI to build a chair.”

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Commissioned features, essays, and book excerpts

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