Serena Williams Poses Unretouched

To accompany her unretouched cover photo on the August, 2019 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, tennis star Serena Williams writes a moving personal essay about the harsh, sexist way she was penalized at the 2018 U.S. Open for defending herself to a judge, the apology she sent to her opponent that day, Naomi Osaka, and why she will always choose to speak up anyway.

Published: Jul 9, 2019
Length: 5 minutes (1,441 words)

Retired teacher found some seahorses off Long Beach, then he built a secret world for them

How a retired school teacher and a former Army staff sergeant work together to study and protect a small colony of Pacific seahorses in the waters off of Long Beach, California. “And if you’ve never seen a seahorse in the wild before, you will feel honored and awed, as if you’ve just seen a unicorn beneath the sea.”

Published: Jul 9, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,281 words)

Ivar’s the Great

A Pacific Northwest resident revisits the chowder and fried fish of her youth to tell the story of Ivar’s, the enduring Washington state seafood chain, and the inextricable link between it, her life, and her family.

Source: Eater
Published: Jun 5, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,358 words)

My Unsexual Revolution

A personal essay in which Diane Shipley confronts her history of sexual dysfunction and wonders who decides what “normal” is, anyway.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 10, 2019
Length: 17 minutes (4,293 words)

Searching for Keith

“But what began as a quest to solve the mystery of (Keith) Davis’s disappearance at sea led von Hoesslin to something much larger—evidence of a human smuggling network reaching from Asia to the Americas. Someone or some people, von Hoesslin believed, knew that the observer had discovered that the boats were carrying more than just fish and had been keen to silence him.”

Author: Sarah Tory
Source: Hakai Magazine
Published: Jul 9, 2019
Length: 24 minutes (6,100 words)

Inside the 21st-Century British Criminal Underworld

Rather than the classic white, pub-going thugs focusing on a single product, be it guns or drugs, England’s new criminal organizations are multinational, tech-savvy, and diversified, aka “polycriminal,” and they have helped make London the world capital of money-laundering.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jul 4, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,242 words)

The Battle of Grace Church

What happened when Brooklyn’s oldest nursery school decided to become less old-fashioned? A riot among the one percent.

Published: Jul 8, 2019
Length: 29 minutes (7,300 words)

New Coke Didn’t Fail. It Was Murdered.

“It’s fun to be cranky about stupid things.” Coca Cola introduced New Coke in 1985 and then, after a populist backlash from Americans decrying that their freedom of choice had been trampled upon, reintroduced Classic Coke after two months. What the company didn’t see at first was that the backlash was led by a man who thought he could parlay all this silly outrage — over a soft drink — into some cash.

Author: Tim Murphy
Source: Mother Jones
Published: Jul 9, 2019
Length: 16 minutes (4,127 words)

The Big Scoop: What A Day With an Ice-Cream Man Taught Me About Modern Britain

“Tony Roach holds Eastbourne together with engine grease and dairy cream.”

Author: Sirin Kale
Source: The Guardian
Published: Jul 9, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,962 words)

Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think

“Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy,” Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former Formula 1 race-car driver, once wrote. “For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line.” The unerring passage of time degenerates one’s productivity at a faster rate than many would imagine. However, there is hope for life after the decline.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jun 19, 2019
Length: 25 minutes (6,289 words)