“The new bridge is square where the old bridge is round, bustling instead of deserted, awash in the sounds of schools and neighborhoods nearby. At some point, Lydia’s haunting shifted along with the traffic patterns. She’s been seen at both bridges, but the new one is the only place she might still hail passing motorists.” […]
“When most of us build or buy a home, we carefully appraise the neighborhood. In Malibu the neighborhood is fire. Fire that revisits the coastal mountains several times a decade. In the past sixty years, ten of these frequent events have turned into all-consuming firestorms.” Welcome to 2025, friends. Peter here. As it does all too often, […]
In this edition:
• Showing our age
• Special delivery
• Unfriendly wagers
• A shore thing
• Sale therapy
“Deep in the valley below us, in the middle distance, gaped the great black cauldron of Litli-Hrútur, its insides awash in a churning fiery stew. We stood in silence on the observation mound with our hands on our hips, faces cast in childish masks of wonder and awe. ” This week, we have two beautiful essays […]
Jaya Saxena answers the Longreads Questionnaire.
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
Featuring stories from Hannah Dreier, Jason Fagone and Julie Johnson, Shruti Swamy, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Kristen Arnett.
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
Recommending excellent stories from Lewis Hyde, Reeves Wiedeman, Sam Myers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and David W. Brown.
Highlighting stories from a collection of pro-Palestine student protesters, Chloé Cooper Jones, Nick Bowlin, Bathsheba Demuth, and Joshua Rigsby.
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