Sabine Heinlein

Sabine Heinlein tells the heartbreaking story of Terri Been, who has devoted years of her life to saving her brother’s after he was sentenced to death by the state of Texas almost two decades ago for a murder he definitively did not commit.

Uncovering the dating habits of conspiracy theorists and the challenges they face.

Does the ‘no kill’ animal shelter movement create more suffering than it spares?

Rewriting the false narrative of childlessness.

Sabine Heinlein lived in a family where everyone was treated as equals. It didn’t work out like they had hoped. Heinlein explores how families communicate to find out what went wrong with hers.

On jogging, recovery and cemeteries:

“The body is determined to let the mind know when enough is enough. And it doesn’t give up easily. The blister was followed by neck and back pain. Eczema began to stain my legs and a mysterious cold moved through my body, from head to chest to lungs and back. To assuage my disconcerted body, my doctors urged me to perform daily “low impact aerobics.” They tried to fool it with Xanax and Valium. This would make me relax and shrink the blister, they thought. Meds are okay, but aerobics? My ass. My daily trip to the cemetery would have to fulfill three things at once: Walking and jogging would strengthen my body and lower cortisol levels, and the army of tombstones would help me reconcile the heimlich with the unheimlich.”

Today we’re excited to make another recent Longreads Member Pick free for everyone. It’s a full chapter from Among Murderers: Life After Prison, by Sabine Heinlein.

Heinlein is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer who spent more than two years at the Castle, a prominent halfway house in Harlem, where she met convicts who were preparing for the outside world. (She’ll be speaking about the book this Thursday at the Mid-Manhattan Library.)

This week’s Member Pick is a chapter from Among Murderers, a new nonfiction book by Sabine Heinlein, published by University of California Press, examining the lives of criminals as they prepare to re-enter society. Heinlein, who was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her Iowa Review essay “A Portrait of the Writer as a Rabbit,” explains the origins of this chapter, which focuses on “Job Readiness.”