Karen Russell: A Brutally Honest Accounting of Writing, Money, and Motherhood

“Every minute with her kids is work lost, and each minute writing subtracts from precious, un-price-able joy.”

Source: Wealthsimple
Published: Mar 9, 2020
Length: 17 minutes (4,445 words)

The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador

[Not single-page] Less than a year after losing half his face to a bull, the victim of one of Spain’s worst matador gorings returns to the ring.

“There is the physical pain, which the doctors reduce with morphine, and then there is the terror. They’re telling him he might never again wear his ‘suit of lights.’ Never stand before another bull. If he can’t return to a plaza, he’ll be exiled from his life. Evicted from his own skin.

In his hospital room, as soon as he can move again, he begins to rehearse bullfighting moves with the sheets. And on October 19, less than two weeks after the accident, he gives a press conference in a wheelchair with his face uncovered.

“‘I have no rancor toward this bull or toward my profession,’ he slurs into the mike. He makes the following pledge: ‘I will return to dress as a torero.'”

Source: GQ
Published: Oct 3, 2012
Length: 29 minutes (7,418 words)