This week, we’re sharing stories from Drew Magary, Amy Wallace, Leif Reigstad, Pam Houston, and Ziya Tong.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Amy Wallace, Katherine Laidlaw, Lisa Miller, Porochista Khakpour, and Lauren Schwartzberg.
The Hollywood Exec and the Hand Transplant That Changed His Life
In her final feature for Los Angeles Magazine, Amy Wallace tells the incredible story of Jonathan Koch, “one of Hollywood’s great closers,” who lost several limbs and nearly his life to septic shock before receiving a revolutionary hand transplant.
Longreads Best of 2017: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Here’s every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
The Surgeon Who Helped Revolutionize Hand Transplants
Dr. Kodi Azari dreamed that one day he’d perform a hand transplant on a patient who would wake up from surgery and start moving their fingers right away.
Dear New Owners: City Magazines Were Already Great
As the president sucks up the oxygen from the media atmosphere, it’s easy to forget how important local journalism is right now. The regional press—the holy trinity of newspapers, alt-weeklies, and city magazines—is where we can find true stories of friends and neighbors impacted by immigration raids, fights over funding public education, and the frontline […]
Derivative Sport: The Journalistic Legacy of David Foster Wallace
Editors and writers discuss the ways David Foster Wallace’s work influenced them and what it was like to work with him.
It’s Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer
Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.
One-Minute Readings: Ben Montgomery Remembers Journalist Michael Brick
Above is a brief tribute to journalist Michael Brick, who died in February at the age of 41. The video features Tampa Bay Times writer Ben Montgomery reading from Brick’s 2006 New York Times story, “Dusk of the Drummer” — and it’s one of many pieces featured in a new collection, Everyone Leaves Behind a Name: True Stories, […]
The Controversy Surrounding Science Fiction’s Most Prestigious Award
At Wired, Amy Wallace reports on the controversy at the Hugo Awards, which has been plagued by accusations by a faction of mostly white male authors who call themselves “Puppies” and argue that storytelling has taken a backseat to identity politics.

