The Strike: Chemicals, Cancer, and the Fight for Health Care
Workers at Momentive Performance Materials had given their lives to the chemical plant. The strike was supposed to save what little they had left.
A Farewell to Fuckboys in the Age of Consent Culture
In the second installment of her series on dating while woke, Minda Honey explores the long unraveling of a #MeToo moment in the wake of cultural upheaval.
A Clarifying Dose of Reality (TV)
In this personal essay, Valentina Valentini tries out for American Idol and it puts her permanently off fame-seeking.
Rules For Departure
An excerpt from Rachel Z. Arndt’s new essay collection, Beyond Measure. While hitching a ride to a week-long bike tour, Arndt considers the rituals of leaving — and making a clean break.
Sober Gay Man Seeks…What, Exactly, He’s No Longer Sure
A personal essay in which Breaking the Ruhls author, Larry Ruhl, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse now in recovery, finds himself adrift in the age of hookup apps.
Chasing the Man Who Caught the Storm: An Interview With Brantley Hargrove
An interview with Brantley Hargrove, the author of a new biography of the storm chaser Tim Samaras, who was killed by the biggest tornado ever recorded. To understand the life of a chaser, Hargrove had to become one himself.
Did Brian Easley Have to Die?
A desperate veteran, missing his disability payment, walked into a bank and took several people hostage. This is how he got there.
My Own Bad Story: I Thought Journalism Would Make a Hero Out of Me
In an essay from his new collection: Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country, Dear Sugars co-host Steve Almond considers his beginnings in journalism through the lens of the “bad stories” he believes delivered our country to the Trump era. Accompanied by a Longreads Podcast interview with Essays Editor Sari Botton.
Sharp Women Writers: An Interview With Michelle Dean
Cultural critic Michelle Dean discusses her new book Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Topics covered range from emotionally fraught book reviews of Susan Sontag to male blowback against the famous first line of Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer to how horrified Elizabeth Hardwick was by her friend Adrienne Rich’s feminism.
The Religion No One Talks About: My Search for Answers in an Old Caribbean Faith
A personal essay in which, after her grandmother’s passing, writer Sarah Betancourt explores Espiritismo — the secret religion her family kept hidden in their basement laundry room.