What It’s Like to Grow Up Gay in Russia

For this week’s Longreads Member Pick we are proud to feature a chapter from Gay Propaganda, a new collection of original stories, interviews and testimonials from LGBT Russians both living there and in exile. The book was edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon, and will be published by OR Books in February. We’d like to thank them for sharing this chapter with Longreads Members. 

Read a free excerpt, and become a Longreads Member to receive the full story and support our service. You can also buy Longreads Gift Memberships to send this and other great stories to friends, family or colleagues.

Source: OR Books
Published: Jan 30, 2014
Length: 10 minutes (2,575 words)

I Was A Love-Letter Ghostwriter

The writer on working on art piece called the “Love Letter Project,” in which she ghostwrote love letters fro strangers:

I listened until he was finished talking. Then I arranged the sentences he’d spoken on the page. It was more like transcribing than writing.

I will never in my life not regret that we didn’t work things out. I will never let go. I don’t want to.

At the front of the room was a small table with a printer, envelopes, pens and stamps. “You may sign your letter,” Jana told him and he did. “Would you like a stamp so you can mail it? Or we can mail it for you.” He took the stamp and addressed the envelope, but wasn’t quite committed enough to let us mail it. His feelings had been so close to the surface. We had happened to catch him at the perfect moment.

But it kept happening like that.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jan 30, 2014
Length: 8 minutes (2,040 words)

The First 48 Makes Millions While the Innocent Have Their Lives Ruined

Once you’re charged with murder on A&E’s The First 48, you’re guilty for life – even if you’re innocent.

In July 2009, 18-year-old Cameron Coker’s life was ripped apart for future viewing by a national audience.
Coker, who’d previously been convicted of dealing drugs, was now the prime suspect in the shooting death of a 16-year-old boy at an apartment complex just east of Highway 6. For this homicide case, Harris County Sheriff’s investigators had company: A film crew from the A&E show The First 48 was there to show the nuts and bolts of the investigation. Entering its tenth season, the series was based on the premise that the first 48 hours of a police investigation are the most crucial. After that time frame, potential evidence goes missing; crime scenes become contaminated; witnesses disappear.

Source: Houston Press
Published: Jan 29, 2014
Length: 17 minutes (4,301 words)

No Second Chance For Stephen Glass: The Long, Strange Downfall of a Journalistic Wunderkind

In May 1998, Adam Penenberg was an editor at Forbes Digital Tool, Forbes magazine’s website, when an angry editor showed him a copy of Stephen Glass’ article “Hack Heaven,” demanding to know why Penenberg hadn’t come across the story himself. Kicking himself for missing the scoop, Penenberg started to investigate and stumbled upon a massive case journalistic fraud.

After I finished reading, I’m pretty sure I muttered “Holy shit!” I had never heard of Jukt Micronics, digital extortion deals or hacker agents. Glass cited anti-hacker legislation, a hacker organization and a law enforcement agency that was news to me. I had never encountered an organization called the National Assembly of Hackers, wasn’t aware of any recent conventions, had never read a hacker newsletter titled “Computer Insider,” nor did I know any hacker with the nom de hack “Big Bad Bionic Boy.” In fact, I didn’t recognize one single fact in “Hack Heaven” save perhaps for the existence of the Internet.

But how could I have missed such a big story? At Forbes.com, I covered business and technology, but also explored music and software piracy, computer hacking, phone phreaking, identity theft, credit card fraud, cyber-spooks and all things relating to the dark side of the Internet. These weren’t part of my job description but were popular with readers, often attracting traffic from people who wouldn’t have known Forbes from Fodors. They quickly became my specialty.

Source: pandodaily.com
Published: Jan 27, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,993 words)

Five Stories About Sports for People Who Hate Sports

Not everyone is into sports, but as Michael Hobbes writes, “that doesn’t mean, as it turns out, that stories about sports can’t be fascinating. The economics! The moral gray areas! The egos! It’s like a reality show in there.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 29, 2014

A Brief History of Class and Waste in India

Here is a full chapter from The Big Necessity, Rose George’s acclaimed 2008 book exploring the world of human waste. The book will be reissued later this year with a new afterword. George’s 2013 book 90 Percent of Everything was featured previously on Longreads, and we’re thrilled to spotlight her work again. 

Published: Jan 1, 2008
Length: 27 minutes (6,900 words)

The Botmaker Who Sees Through the Internet

A profile of Darius Kazemi, who is turning Twitter bots into an art form: He’s created dozens of automated programs whose purposes can run the gamut from cultural commentary to complete nonsense:

Kazemi is part of a small but vibrant group of programmers who, in addition to making clever Web toys, have dedicated themselves to shining a spotlight on the algorithms and data streams that are nowadays humming all around us, and using them to mount a sharp social critique of how people use the Internet—and how the Internet uses them back.

Source: Boston Globe
Published: Jan 28, 2014
Length: 9 minutes (2,258 words)

Sinner in the Hands

A church with the features of a cult affects the town of Wells, Texas:

But as the number of church members crept upward, residents of the tiny town started to feel uneasy. The recent arrivals systematically visited other churches to accuse the congregations of spiritual bankruptcy. They roamed the streets listening to the elders’ sermons on headphones, and they were frequently confrontational. A few church members, including Ringnald, moved in across from Gertrude Hearne, an 84-year-old grandmother of ten. Almost every afternoon, as she sat in a tan recliner in her wood-paneled living room, watching Jimmy Swaggart, church members would drop by to read her the Bible or sing hymns. At the sight of the Pentecostal televangelist, they’d flick off her television and declare Swaggart a false prophet. Finally, she’d had enough. “When I asked them to stop, they told me I was going to die, and I said, ‘You are too.’ ”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Jan 27, 2014
Length: 35 minutes (8,773 words)

Hollywood Elementary

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc on the Oakwood Toluca Hills, a vast complex of temporary rental apartments that hundreds of aspiring Hollywood families call home:

Each year, between mid-January and May, when some 100-odd pilots are being cast, one-quarter of the Oakwood’s 1,151 furnished units are filled by families of child actors. “Home to the Famous, and Almost Famous,” a billboard at the front gate reads. Located near Burbank, it’s conveniently close to most of the major studios. The Oakwood’s orientation for “newbies,” the first-timers who make up about 80 percent of the families staying there each year, is also a draw: lectures about the entertainment business; connections to people like Simmons, who give complimentary classes to enlist new students; a show-biz-kid expo that displays all the tertiary industries: diction tapes, head shot photography and packaging, marketing-strategy DVD’s. On-site tutoring — unaccredited, held weekday mornings in the conference room — can be paid for weekly to allow children to come and go, given their unpredictable work schedules. Units at the Oakwood start at $2,000 a month for a studio with a Murphy bed.

Published: Jun 4, 2006
Length: 31 minutes (7,938 words)

Hokkaido, Japan: The Land of Milk and Uni

To Hokkaido, In Search of the Uni Grail:

For the past decade, I have sought out sea urchin like a zombified bipedal sea otter. I have eaten giant red urchins—uni, in sushi-speak—alive and wiggling in slow motion from the dock in Santa Barbara, California, and I’ve slurped from split shells in the street markets of Catania, Sicily. I’ve eaten it in $15 panini in Manhattan and off of a trompe l’oeil seashore of frozen rocks and ice in Copenhagen.

Many times I have heard the sotto voce benediction of “Hokkaido” delivered when the sushi chef hands over that trumping-everything-else piece of uni nigiri. Many times I have thought, Someday. Someday I will go there, to the northernmost island of Japan, and eat that most revered of urchins in full view of the waters from which it was plundered.

Published: Jan 17, 2014
Length: 11 minutes (2,800 words)