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.

Author: Ian Frisch
Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 16, 2018
Length: 32 minutes (8,040 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 13, 2018
Length: 19 minutes (4,980 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 6, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,320 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 10, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,245 words)

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.

Author: Larry Ruhl
Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 12, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,005 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 11, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,096 words)

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.

Author: Aaron Gell
Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 9, 2018
Length: 36 minutes (9,230 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 3, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,223 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 4, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,014 words)

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.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 30, 2018
Length: 22 minutes (5,704 words)