Through a Glass, Tearfully

Maureen Stanton contemplates her history of crying in inappropriate moments, and considers tears from gender-based and political perspectives.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 17, 2020
Length: 25 minutes (6,448 words)

Shadow of a Doubt

In 2011, Michael Shannon was wrongly convicted of murder, even though two jurors voted to acquit him—a result of a Louisiana law rooted in discrimination. For defendants like Shannon and the holdout jurors who believed in their innocence, it has left a bitter legacy.

Published: Jan 16, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,800 words)

When a Whisper Network Fails

“What really wounded me wasn’t having to dodge one mediocre writer’s half-assed assaults — it was that I’d reached out for support afterwards and found nothing. It was the unruffled reaction of my peers when I told them what had happened, the implication that I should have known what to expect from him, when I genuinely had no idea at all. It was the words used to minimize his behavior — creepy, sketchy, bad vibes, never liked that guy — spoken by a community whose existence turned on the idea that words were of value.”

Source: The Outline
Published: Jan 13, 2020
Length: 6 minutes (1,668 words)

Can the Fitness Industry and Body Positivity Coexist?

“Is the fitness industry ready to create safe spaces across the board? It’s not clear that everybody even understands the question.”

Source: Elemental
Published: Jan 15, 2020
Length: 14 minutes (3,647 words)

After My Dad Died, I Started Sending Him Emails. Months Later, Someone Wrote Back

After Rax King’s father died in May, 2018, she wrote him emails to remember their relationship and to work through her grief. Stunningly, long after she’d began writing, someone — a living witness to the relationship she had with her dad — wrote back.

Author: Rax King
Source: Glamour
Published: Jan 15, 2020
Length: 7 minutes (1,988 words)

Her Sorority Sisters Suspected She Was Pregnant. What Did Emile Weaver Know?

In April 2015, Emile Weaver gave birth alone in the bathroom of her sorority house at a small liberal arts university in Ohio. Sorority sisters who’d suspected the pregnancy for months discovered her baby that night in the garbage, dead. Alex Ronan investigates what happened to Weaver, the campus response to rumors and confirmation of Weaver’s pregnancy, and how her community reckoned with questions of blame and responsibility before and after the baby’s discovery.

Content warning: This story covers neonaticide, “when a parent kills his or her baby in the 24-hour window after birth.”

Author: Alex Ronan
Source: Elle
Published: Jan 16, 2020
Length: 36 minutes (9,000 words)

The Cat Years

Christine Marshall considers cats and kittens, the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, and how writing has helped her to express and process her anger, resentment, and grief after a series of miscarriages.

Published: Jan 11, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,962 words)

Whatever Happened to ______ ?

Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.

Author: Anonymous
Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 15, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,879 words)

Argentina’s Textile Crusader

“If you want an unusually cozy scarf or sweater made of natural fiber, merino wool or alpaca is the usual choice. But what about guanaco, the alpaca’s little-known cousin, which grows even finer fleece? For Adriana Marina, the guanaco’s time has come to be South America’s finest source for sustainable textiles.”

Published: Jun 10, 2019
Length: 20 minutes (5,062 words)

Smoke from Underground

“But the fire will outlive them all, and me. It will outlive my grandchildren and perhaps the human species. It has been burning for so long that it’s possible to forget that it started at the town dump. Centralia is the site of a disaster that sounds too stupid to be real, a trash fire that will inherit the earth.”

Source: The Baffler
Published: Jan 7, 2020
Length: 15 minutes (3,875 words)