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Elmo Keep is a writer who has written for The Hairpin, and other places. ••• The Tetris Effect — Justin Wolfe, The Awl There really isn’t a way to talk about this without spoiling the reveals. Just read it, whether you understand gaming or not, it doesn’t matter: If you don’t, you will come away […]

Nicholas Thompson is a senior editor at The New Yorker and a frequent Longreader. ** I’m a sucker for stories about reinvention, disappearence, and people who pretend to be someone they aren’t. The genre has cliches, and can become trite. But it can also be wonderful. And this year, the category brought us some wonderful […]

Joe Spring is the online editor for Outside Magazine. This was a big year for longform journalism. Byliner came out with blockbuster stories, like Jon Krakuer’s Three Cups of Deceit. The Atavist put out consistently strong features with solid multimedia. At Outside, our editors and writers contributed excellent investigative online exclusives (“Blood in the Water,” “Crashing Down”). Thanks […]

Matt Pearce is a contributing writer for The Los Angeles Times, The New Inquiry, and The Pitch. He’s based in Kansas City and recently covered the Egyptian elections and uprisings on Tahrir Square. ••• 1. Paul Ford – “The Epiphanator” – New York magazine I think this year we’ve reached this saturation point where a […]

Kevin Smokler is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Practical Classics: Rereading Your Favorite Books from High School (Prometheus Books, 2013) and curator of Deep Interviews here on Longreads.  *** Here on Longreads, I’m curating Deep Interviews (#deepinterviews)—lengthy interviews with interesting people—a format I’ve grown to love. It’s not quite original reporting but certainly […]

Evan Kindley is the managing editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. ••• Ariel Levy, “Basta Bunga Bunga” (June 6, 2011) – The New Yorker A great piece about what proved to be the Last Days of Berlusconi’s Italy, with all the virtues of the typical artfully triangulated New Yorker profile (as recently codified by […]

Peter Smith has written about food and science for GOOD, Wired, and Gastronomica. He’s based in Maine, and, in 2011, he covered pickle juice, patented sandwiches, and the last sardine cannery in North America. This is his first attempt at Top Five Longreads.     *** Here are my (somewhat arbitrarily selected) #longreads that, er, explore unexpected, […]

Molly Lambert is a writer covering pop culture at Grantland. (She’s also featured in our Top 10 Longreads of 2011) *** These are some Longreads I enjoyed this year: • “The Bell Jar At 40”: Emily Gould on Sylvia Plath (Poetry Foundation) • “The J in J. Crew”: Molly Young on Jenna Lyons (New York magazine) • […]

Brian Wolly is an associate web editor at Smithsonian Magazine. ••• 1. Tom Bissell’s Breakdown of L.A. Noire on Grantland When ESPN and Bill Simmons’ Grantland debuted in early June, the knives were out and its initial reaction was mixed at best. Like many, I approached the new project with simultaneous skepticism and optimism, but it […]

Kevin Purdy is a freelance writer, and a frequent Longreader. Check out his site here. Not all written in 2011, but brought to my attention and saved in 2011: In Which There’s a Girl in New York City Who Calls Herself the Human Trampoline – This Recording Graceland is truly the one album I never […]