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Longreads features

The Memory Maker

OpenAI’s Sora allowed you to deepfake yourself. Users started to remember things that never happened.

The Age of Dinosaurs

“Ruminating on extinction, under the slanted tutelage of my child, felt like a responsible thing to do.”

Hollow Body

On attention to craft in defiance of AI.

Defining Color

“A deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral, bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william.”

Into the Darkness

Germanyโ€™s Black Forest faces a future of transformation. So do the people who have lived there for centuries.

My Unlikely Existence

Is AI helping prospective parents game the fertility lottery? Should it?

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Recent editors’ picks

The Warehouse, in Plain Sight

Charmaine Chua | Places Journal | April 14, 2026 | 4,791 words

“That concrete box off the freeway wasnโ€™t designed for storage so much as captureโ€”of markets, workers, and, now, people detained by immigration agents. Itโ€™s a disappearing machine. We need toโ€ฆ

Our Longing for Inconvenience

Hanif Abdurraqib | The New Yorker | April 17, 2026 | 2,879 words

“The modern world has made us ill-equipped for the nuisances of past technologies, even as it has fuelled nostalgia for things that might transport us back to calmer times.”

She Knows a Place

Sophie Abramowitz | The New York Review of Books | April 16, 2026| 4,213 words

“For seven decades, the gospel singer Mavis Staples has troubled the opposition between chorus and soloist, background and lead.”

Redshift

Elena Saavedra Buckley | Harper’s Magazine | April 15, 2026 | 8,874 words

“Rehearsing for humanityโ€™s future on Mars.”

Leaving America

Lindsey Tramuta | The Bitter Southerner | March 14, 2026 | 3,900 words

“Americans have always moved away. These days, expat Lindsey Tramuta writes, record numbers are leaving or planning to leave in search of health care, civil rights, freedoms, even safety. Doesโ€ฆ

The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt

Craig Fehrman | Defector | April 15, 2026 | 2,279 words

“Historians and nonfiction authors often glide over lived experience. They prefer actions, citations, details, dates. But I had just gone through something primalโ€”something beyond my control and beyond the boundariesโ€ฆ

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Weekly Top 5

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week collects standout work from David Moudy-Miller, Caitlin Wash Miller, Kevin T. Baker, Alex Vadukul, and Jordan Ritter Conn.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Highlighting excellent stories by Charles Bethea, Mahmoud Mushtaha, Geoffrey Gray, Luke Ottenhof, and Matthew Shaer.

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Learn to Love Your Search Results Again.

Introducing the Longreads Story Recommender.

The Longreads questionnaire

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Excerpts from The Atavist Magazine, our sister publication

The Good Catholics of Buffalo

With thousands of US soldiers dying in Vietnam, a righteous group of young New Yorkers embarked on a secret mission to bring the war machine to its knees.

The Dark and Stormy Tale of a ShantyTok Band

When a scraggly band of folk musicians arrived to tour the UK, residents of a small Welsh town were enamoredโ€”until they learned that the bandโ€™s leader ruled with an iron fist.

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Longreads reading lists

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