My Mongolian Spot

An ephemeral birthmark is a rare gift, connecting me to generations spanning the centuries.

Published: Aug 1, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,250 words)

Who Was She? A DNA Test Only Opened New Mysteries

For most of her life, Alice Collins Plebuch believed she was the daughter of Irish Americans. A DNA test upended everything she thought she knew about her family history.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jul 27, 2017
Length: 24 minutes (6,000 words)

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Ghosts

In this profile at New Republic, Josephine Livingstone talks with Viet Thanh Nguyen (winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer) about the ghosts that inhabit his life, his writing, and his birthplace in Vietnam.

Source: New Republic
Published: Jul 25, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,516 words)

I Choose My Pearls: On Feminism, Disneyland, and Fashion

“‘We fought for years so you didn’t have to dress like that,’ said the woman next to me waiting to board Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.”

Source: The Rumpus
Published: Jul 20, 2017
Length: 8 minutes (2,128 words)

The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice

At 92, gossip columnist Liz Smith is recovering from a stroke, but still looking for a scoop. She pioneered a kind of celebrity journalism in the 1980s that made national news: she made celebrities like her. Her friendship with Ivana Trump soon became part of the story, as the Trump divorce ripped headlines away from international news, like the falling of the Berlin Wall.

Published: Jul 28, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,700 words)

The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso

A mysterious assault. An unsolved murder. And a ship that hasn’t given up all its secrets.

Published: Jul 27, 2017
Length: 25 minutes (6,275 words)

The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’

An exhausted single mother takes a bath and her five-year-old daughter wanders out of the apartment and is found outside. Instead of being returned to her mother, a neighbor calls Children’s Services  and the daughter is put in foster care. For women living in poor neighborhoods with few child care options, a single mistake can lead to a legal nightmare.

Published: Jul 21, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,000 words)

Yearning for My Emo Days in Nostalgia-Inducing Asbury Park

A personal essay in which writer Mabel Rosenheck considers her nostalgia for a key time in her life: the summer of 2003, when she was a young, depressed adult attending the Surf & Skate music festival in Asbury Park with friends in a similar emotional space, whom she’d met on the internet.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 28, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,918 words)

Who’s Left to Defend Tommy Curry?

A black philosopher at Texas A&M thought forcing a public discussion about race and violence was his job. Turns out people didn’t want to hear it.

Published: Jul 27, 2017
Length: 32 minutes (8,030 words)

I’ve Found Her

Photos of an elderly French stranger has one Canadian writer examining the threads that connect people across continents and generations.

Source: Brick
Published: Jul 27, 2017
Length: 19 minutes (4,882 words)