The Wind Delivered the Story

In this haunting essay, Josina Guess confronts South Carolina’s violent racist past when she discovers, over time, newspapers in her yard telling the story of Willie Earle’s 1947 mass lynching and the subsequent acquittal of all 31 accused.

Published: Feb 27, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,143 words)

People Don’t Get it’: Inside the World of Hyper-Realistic Baby Doll Collecting

Kelli Korducki dives into a subculture of (mostly) women who collect “reborns” — dolls made to look and feel like actual human infants.  Sometimes the dolls are a source of emotional support and comfort; sometimes they are collectible art objects; and sometimes they are income generators for those who profit off of viral YouTube videos in which they care for the “babies.”

Source: The Guardian
Published: Feb 27, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,198 words)

The Diet Industrial Complex Got Me, and It Will Never Let Me Go

There’s participating in the body positivity movement and then there’s actual body positivity, and one’s a lot harder — impossible, for some — than the other.

Published: Feb 26, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,102 words)

On Getting Lost

A journey through the Big Thicket of Texas.

Source: Texas Highways
Published: Feb 1, 2020
Length: 9 minutes (2,457 words)

The Beautiful Art of Hassling Politicians While Wearing Animal Costumes

It’s a rite of passage for campaign workers — and an underappreciated pillar of our democracy.

Published: Feb 24, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,771 words)

The Secret History of America’s Oldest Tofu Shop

Back before hippies and health nuts discovered cultured soy. Before Portland, Oregon gave the world the Gardenburger, a man from Okayama, Japan opened a tofu shop there in 1911. The United States was filled with racism and fear. But even after the Ohta family was released from WWII internment camps, Ota Tofu never stopped making their nigari-style tofu. It remains some of the best in the country.

Published: Sep 18, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,042 words)

Waiting for the End of the World

Agnostic feminist liberal Lauren Groff attends Prepper Camp in Asheville, NC, and discovers that she’s not so different from her prepper brethren.

Published: Feb 26, 2020
Length: 36 minutes (9,063 words)

MS Is Meticulously Destroying Me. I Am Being Unmade.

“It’s not that you surrender, in the end. Even surrender takes effort, and you just don’t have the energy.”

Source: The Irish Times
Published: Feb 11, 2020
Length: 23 minutes (5,757 words)

Replaying My Shame

In the past 13 years, Emily Gould has become an accomplished author and feminist book publisher. As she prepares for the launch of her latest novel, Perfect Tunes, she worries that to many people, she will only ever be what she was for less than a year, in 2007: an editor at now defunct media gossip site Gawker, who suffered a traumatizing moment on national television that still haunts her.

Source: The Cut
Published: Feb 26, 2020
Length: 16 minutes (4,239 words)

The Strange, Forgotten Life of Viola Roseboro’

In the early 20th century, the passionatt fiction editor at McClure’s magazine mentored Willa Cather and O. Henry, took long walks through Manhattan in place of staying put at a desk, read and smoked cigarettes on park benches in all kinds of weather. She was, as this author writes, “a talent whisperer and literary booster,” and even though she was one of the world’s great conversationalists, she left no autobiography.

Published: Feb 24, 2020
Length: 8 minutes (2,239 words)