‘Every Woman Writer Feels Like She’s Starting Over Without Any Guides’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Ann Leckie talks about “The Raven Tower,” the erasure of women writers from the canon, the privilege inherent to ‘the anxiety of influence,’ and the power of tradition.
‘We Are All Responsible’: How #MeToo Rejects the Bystander Effect By Soraya Roberts Feature The classic “Bystander Effect” blames a lack of intervention on diffusion of responsibility. That doesn’t fly anymore.
On Asylums By Lisa Chen Feature A problematic cat offered more insight into the author’s ailing father than you’d think.
Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me By Kimberly Mack Feature Kimberly Mack recalls the ways in which rock music bonded her with her African American mom, and how those fierce sounds helped them cope with the poverty, violence, and despair both outside and inside their Brooklyn home.
‘The Most Versatile Criminal In History’ By Jonny Auping Feature Journalist Evan Ratliff has uncovered the shocking reach of Paul Le Roux’s criminal enterprise — a global network of pawns, most of whom were unaware of the full extent of the empire.
Notes on a Shipwreck By Longreads Feature On Lampedusa, history is never far from the islanders’ thoughts, and they are preoccupied by its contradictions. Is Lampedusa a stop on a long journey, or is it a graveyard? Does every fence need a hole in it?
Remembering Ken Nordine By Tom Maxwell Feature The ambitious radio personality created his own form of expression, called “word jazz,” to properly accomodate his musical voice and artistic ambitions.
Maybe What We Need Is … More Politics? By Aaron Timms Feature Recent books by economists who hope to “save capitalism” dismiss popular ideas as “just politics.” But why assume the popular is the enemy of the good?
Class Dismissed By Alison Stine Feature When she attends an elite private college on scholarship, Alison Stine discovers that education isn’t quite the equalizer she expected it to be.
Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in British Music Writing By Longreads Feature The history of England’s fertile music press reveals as much about the opinionated English youth who created it as it does the music they covered in the second half of the 20th century.
‘What Would Social Media Be Like As the World Is Ending?’ By Jacob Silverman Feature In Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha,” a journalist who has survived Trump’s nuclear apocalypse gets an assignment from what’s left of the New York Times Magazine: find out what people were tweeting as the bombs fell.
‘I Saw My Countrymen Marched Out of Tacoma’ By Joy Lanzendorfer Feature It started in Eureka, then it spread. Up and down the Pacific Coast, white mobs turned on Chinese-Americans.
Preparing for a Post-Roe America By Laura Barcella Feature Activist and author Robin Marty says the biggest threat facing women in a post-Roe America would be arrest, not death.
Magen David and Me By Marya Zilberberg Feature After facing persecution in the former Soviet Union and a new wave of antisemitism in the United States, Marya Zilberberg decides to put her Jewishness on display.
Teen Girls Finally Get to Touch Themselves By Soraya Roberts Feature Pop culture loves to show teen boys jerking off, but girls never seemed to get the same attention. They are getting their happy ending now.
You’re Just Too Good to Be True By Kavita Das Feature My on-again, off-again love affair with Engelbert Humperdinck.
Mothers of the Future By Thea Prieto Feature In a new memoir, Sophia Shalmiyev attempts to reunite with her missing mother through scraps, signs, and surrogates.
If You Were a Sack of Cumin By Longreads Feature In the midst of the Syrian Civil War, three grown siblings attempt to fulfill their father’s final wish. The journey is dangerous, but that’s no surprise; nowadays, death is always hard work.
‘Archive, Archive, Archive’: Valeria Luiselli on Reading In Order To Write By Lily Meyer Feature To write “Lost Children Archive,” Valeria Luiselli studied the refugee crisis “obliquely,” reading about other historical moments of children’s mass displacement, amassing a reader’s archive of loss.
Shelved: Sonny Rollins Live at Carnegie Hall By Tom Maxwell Feature The saxophone colossus recorded two concerts at the same venue fifty years apart. Only one recording emerged from the vault.
The Caviar Con By David Gauvey Herbert Feature When caviar-crazed Eastern Europeans flocked to Warsaw, Missouri to poach eggs from a vulnerable species of fish, federal agents went undercover and spent two years to build a case against them.
Versage By Longreads Feature Following knock-off fashion’s flow from Lagos to Guangzhou (and back again).
Joe Scapellato on “The Made-Up Man” and the Myth of the Self By Kathryn Watson Feature In Scapellato’s new novel, a man is pulled into a noir detective mystery he doesn’t want to solve.
Atlantic City Is Really Going Down This Time By Rebecca McCarthy Feature There’s no doubt that Atlantic City is going under. The only question left is: Can an entire city donate its body to science?
In Defense of Schadenfreude By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Tiffany Watt Smith argues that schadenfreude, the joy we derive from another’s misfortune, is just a natural part of the very complex emotional responses we have as human beings.
The New Scabs: Stars Who Cross the Picket Line By Soraya Roberts Feature “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, and it still stands.
Wrestling With the Ghosts In My Head By Janet Steen Feature Janet Steen tries to understand the shifting causes behind a decade of mysterious migraine pain.
Writing for the Movies: A Letter from Hollywood, 1962 By Longreads Feature In this classic essay about a classic American art form, legendary screenwriter Daniel Fuchs reflects on his lifetime learning the trade.
‘I Believe That Silence Is Ineffective’: Devi S. Laskar on Invisibility and American Terror By Ruth LeFaive Feature Laskar’s debut novel imagines an alternate ending to an incident from her real life: When law enforcement agents raided her home, and confiscated her unfinished novel, what if she had refused to comply?