The Green Green Grass of Utah

Growth advocates in St. George, Utah want a billion-dollar pipeline to support a rising population. Conservationists don’t.
Source: Outside
Published: Aug 14, 2018
Length: 26 minutes (6,570 words)

A Few Words about Fake Breasts

Nell Boeschenstein, writing almost seven years after her prophylactic mastectomy, examines how breasts — whether real or fake, attached to or removed from their original owner — carry an overabundance of personal and cultural meaning.

Source: Granta
Published: Aug 20, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,409 words)

Manifest Destiny-Lite With Souvenirs: Why Assholes in Turquoise Are Flooding the Southwest

“You can’t waltz into a pueblo and say, ‘I’m here so you can tell me about your religion.'”

Source: Jezebel
Published: Apr 5, 2018
Length: 25 minutes (6,350 words)

A New Citizen Decides to Leave the Tumult of Trump’s America

As American values shifted, and the New York that she loved changed, one naturalized citizen found herself changing too, so she and her family decided to return to her native England even though it was no longer home.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 20, 2018
Length: 23 minutes (5,920 words)

Giving Up the Ghost

After his death, Emily Urquhart ‘sees’ her brother with regularity. Nearly 20 years later, stories and science help to explain why.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 20, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,759 words)

Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsofSummer Turned a Corner of the Internet into a Supportive Literary Community

An essay on #1000WordsofSummer, the two-week-long public writing-accountability project novelist Jami Attenberg offered to writers for free, via Twitter, Instagram and TinyLetter, from June 15th through June 29th of 2018.

Published: Aug 18, 2018
Length: 6 minutes (1,694 words)

Brown Girl with Bubble Gum

As a mixed-race kid with free-form hair, Lisa Rosenberg believed learning to blow bubblegum bubbles would be her ticket to an idealized (white) American girlhood.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 17, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,676 words)

Hatebook

A Reuters investigation finds that Facebook is having a difficult time combating hate speech in Myanmar, a market where the platform dominates and where there have been regular outbreaks of ethnic violence. Reuters found more than 1,000 posts, comments, and images targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority group, some urging for them to be shot or exterminated.

Source: Reuters
Published: Aug 15, 2018
Length: 18 minutes (4,500 words)

Fighting the Vanilla Thieves of Madagascar

Demand for vanilla from Madagascar has skyrocketed in recent years, but the process of exporting the spice to markets around the world is fraught with risk, unpredictability, and — increasingly — violence.

Source: BBC
Published: Aug 16, 2018
Length: 11 minutes (2,967 words)

Where Even Walmart Won’t Go: How Dollar General Took Over Rural America

In small towns across Kansas, residents and community leaders grapple with the increasingly ubiquitous presence of America’s fastest-growing retailer.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 13, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,417 words)