Search Results for: California

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Burying My Family’s History in Bakersfield.

Longreads Pick

An essay about clearing out a dead father’s home, and the evolution of a landfill in California’s Central Valley.

Source: Boom
Published: Jan 6, 2015
Length: 24 minutes (6,000 words)

The End of Gangs in the City of Angels

Longreads Pick

Los Angeles gave America the modern street gang. Groups like the Crips and MS-13 have spread from coast to coast, and even abroad. But on the streets of Southern California they’ve seen a significant decline. Why?

Published: Dec 28, 2014
Length: 26 minutes (6,580 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo by jbergen

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Knives, a Death, a Famous Name

Longreads Pick

Former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez was once considered the most powerful lawmaker in California. This two-part series examines whether political influence trumped justice when Nuñez’s son Esteban was charged in the 2008 stabbing death of 22-year-old Luis Santos.

Published: Dec 22, 2014
Length: 23 minutes (5,900 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Everybody Loves Walter

Longreads Pick

The story of a homeless man who became the guardian of a California beach and its birds

Author: Kit Stolz
Source: Latterly
Published: Nov 18, 2014
Length: 8 minutes (2,050 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Platinum: A Singer Visits a Women’s Prison

Thao Nguyen | Radio Silence | October 2014 | 6 minutes (1500 words) Read more…

Interview: Former ‘Matilda’ Star Mara Wilson on Leaving Hollywood and Becoming a Writer

Adele Oliveira | Longreads | Nov. 2014 | 15 minutes (3,798 words)

In 1994, when she was seven years old, Mara Wilson appeared on The Today Show with Katie Couric to promote a remake of Miracle on 34th Street, in which she starred.

Right away, it’s easy to see why Wilson, who’s also known for her work in Mrs. Doubtfire and Matilda, is a successful and endearing child actor. She wears a red-checked gingham shirt underneath a wooly red cardigan, and her feet stick straight off the armchair on which she sits, too short to reach the ground. Wilson is missing teeth, and despite lisping, her diction is perfect and she’s polite and sincere with Couric, who mispronounces Wilson’s first name. Couric asks Wilson if she’d like to be like Natalie Wood someday—Wood played Wilson’s role in the original 1947 version of Miracle on 34th Street. Wood started acting as a child, and in Couric’s words, grew up to be “a very famous, well-known, talented actress.”

Wilson hesitates, and you can see her thinking as she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I might not want to be an actress all of my life.” Wilson says she wants to be a “script writer” and that while she hasn’t yet written down any of her stories, “I have a lot of them in my head.”

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