It’s Tennis, Charlie Brown By Patrick Sauer Feature An obscure character was a stand-in for the creator of Peanuts when he fell in love with tennis during the sport’s boom in the 1970s.
The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez By Longreads Feature In the story of one Mexican-American woman’s life, we can see the whole tragic story of the US-Mexico border’s transformation from a simple chain-link fence to a humanitarian crisis.
Edible Complex By Jen Doll Feature Never eat pot chocolate on a third date, and other lessons about love.
For the Thirsty Girl By Soraya Roberts Feature Thirst used to be desperation, now it’s aspiration. And men are finding it hard to quench.
‘What Is Missing Is Her Soul’: Women and Art, Girls and Men By Alana Mohamed Feature In a new book, Camille Laurens examines the life of the model for Degas’ masterpiece, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” But there’s still so much we don’t know.
Bracing for the Silence of an Empty Nest By Michelle Cruz Gonzales Feature As her son finishes high school and prepares to leave for college, Michelle Cruz Gonzales looks back on his early years as a pianist and anticipates a future without the sound of his playing filling the house.
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.
The Politics of UFOs By Anna Merlan Feature In the past few years the world of UFO “researchers” has been afflicted by the kinds of conspiratorial cracks that have appeared throughout American culture: Who can be trusted?
Your Turn By Longreads Feature Damon Young looks back at his family’s journey toward homeownership, and what that can really mean when you’re black in America.
At the Maacher Bazaar, Fish For Life By Madhushree Ghosh Feature Madhushree Ghosh continues to honor her late parents’ memory…through the simple act of making fish curry.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’ By Amy Brady Feature Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
Family Animals By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from her new memoir, Grace Talusan fondly remembers the badly behaved dog that won her skeptical father’s heart.
MACHO: On Black Holes, and the Fantasies of Men By Frances Dodds Feature Frances Dodds recalls two men who laid bare the fragile lines between desire, pain and manipulation — and questions the framework of her own fantasies.
The Curious Tale of the Salish Sea Feet By Kea Krause Feature To date, 21 disembodied feet have washed up on the shores of Seattle’s Salish Sea. What at first looked like the work of a serial killer turned out to be something even more unsettling: A message from the ocean about who we are.
The American Worth Ethic By Bryce Covert Feature Like so many of our lofty ideals, the “American Work Ethic” is actually two different standards — one for the wealthy and one for the poor — with two different interpretations of what work looks like.
A Rich Awakening By Soraya Roberts Feature The only way to get wealth equality is for the rich to give up their power, but how do you get them to do that?
Orwell’s Last Neighborhood By Longreads Feature While envisioning the darkest of futures and grappling with mortality, the English writer retreated to an idyllic Scottish isle to write Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Other Rachel Lyons By Rachel Lyon Feature Having a fairly common name gives Rachel Lyon occasional glimpses into the lives of her doppelgangers — and the roads she has not taken.
‘I’m Always Writing Against This Idea That Denver’s a White Space.’ By Adam Morgan Feature Kali Fajardo-Anstine talks about her new short story collection “Sabrina & Corina,” her obsession with dualities, and Chicano and Indigenous history in Denver.
The Unreliable Reader By Wei Tchou Feature In Esmé Weijun Wang’s book of personal essays, “The Collected Schizophrenias,” it’s the reader, not the writer, who is an unreliable narrator.
How Does a Person Lose Track of Their Diary? By Sophie Lucido Johnson Feature Stumbling upon someone’s lost journal in a used book store leads Sophie Lucido Johnson down a path she couldn’t have expected.
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch By Anne Thériault Feature In fraught games of power politics, sometimes the best revenge is not being exiled to die alone on an island in the South Atlantic.
When Zora and Langston Took a Road Trip By Longreads Feature In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston gave Langston Hughes a lift to Tuskegee in her Nash coupe, nicknamed “Sassy Susie.” It was one of most fortuitous hangouts in literary history.
Unleashed in Paris By Kate Gavino Feature As a semi-professional dog walker in Paris, expat Kate Gavino has found a comfortable way to learn French.
Dancing Backup: Puerto Ricans in the American Muchedumbre By Carina del Valle Schorske Feature Carina del Valle Schorske traces a lineage of Puerto Rican backup dancers in American entertainment from Rita Moreno to JLo.
‘There’s Virtually No Conversation In Chicago … About the Aftershocks of the Violence.’ By Hope Reese Feature In “An American Summer,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz tries to report on gun deaths on Chicago’s South Side with the same attention to survivors, anniversaries, and aftershocks that is paid to mass shootings.
They Call Her La Primera, Jai Alai’s Last Hope By Britni de la Cretaz Feature Three decades ago, Becky Smith wanted to become jai alai’s first woman pro. Now the sport can’t make a comeback without her.
The Light Years By Longreads Feature After his parents pushed him out of their home, a teenager descended into the drug-fueled counterculture of the 1970s American West.