Roxane Gay | An Untamed State | May 2014 | 11 minutes (2,742 words) * * * Roxane Gay’s new novel, An Untamed State, is out this week, and we’re excited to present the opening chapters with the Longreads community. Our thanks to Gay and Grove Atlantic for sharing it here. For more, read our Roxane […]
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Posted inReading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Photo: Richard Barnes *** 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. *** 1. No Exit: ‘Your Feeling of Autonomy Is a Fantasy’ Gideon Lewis-Kraus | Wired | April 23, 2014 | 42 minutes […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Financial Reality of a $200,000 Book Advance
In 2008 I sold a book-in-progress for $200,000 ($170,000 after commission, to be paid in four installments), which still seems to me like a lot of money. At the time, though, it seemed infinite. The resulting book—a “paperback original,” as they’re called—has sold around 8,000 copies, which is about a fifth of what it needed […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
How to Write About Tax Havens and the Super-Rich: An Interview with Nicholas Shaxson
Last year Shaxson published a Vanity Fair article, “A Tale of Two Londons,” that described the residents of one of London’s most exclusive addresses—One Hyde Park—and the accounting acrobatics they had performed to get there.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Sports for People Who Hate Sports
OK, “hate” is too strong a word. But I fundamentally do not get sports. Playing them, yes, fine. But knowing players’ names, arguing that this one guy is better than that other guy, keeping a little Excel sheet of strikes and yards and rebounds in my head? Baffling. But that doesn’t mean, as it turns […]
Posted inQuotes
A Think Piece About Think Pieces
Always pick sides! Team Aniston!! The internet demands it, even if it’s only half-thoughts it wants, thoughts like, “This, just this” or “This is everything.” “This” is not a sentence. Nor is “Best. Thing. Ever.” Nor “!!!!” But worse than inchoate enthusiasm is the “think piece” at the other end of the spectrum, a form […]
Posted inQuotes
What Happened When We Discovered What Mattered
“Besides nearly killing me, college taught me several things. Namely, that external identity mattered. Being black mattered. It determined where to get off the Boston subway without receiving a baseball bat to the head. Being the biracial child of a single, white mother determined which whites would beg me, breezily to integrate certain spaces and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Most Difficult Age to Be When You Work in Hollywood
“The Writer’s Guild of America has a term for my situation: They call it ‘The Gap.’ It’s the time period between when your years as a working writer end and your retirement begins. I actually have an excellent pension for when I finally retire. The Guild is a strong union and it has negotiated an […]
Posted inUncategorized
The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side: Our Longreads Member Pick
Mark Oppenheimer | The Atlantic Books | November 2013 | 88 minutes (22,700 words) Longreads Members not only support this service, but they receive exclusive ebooks from the best writers and publishers in the world. Our latest Member Pick, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side, is a new story by Mark Oppenheimer and The Atlantic Books, […]
Posted inUncategorized
Who's Funding Russia's Skinhead Terrorists?
Who’s Funding Russia’s Skinhead Terrorists? “Five years ago,” said Dmitry Bakhirev, a lawyer for one of the National Socialist Organization defendants, “you would hear about some skinheads beating a Tajik migrant on the metro. Then it became knives and aluminum bats. Then firearms. Soon you will be hearing about machine guns and grenade launchers.” By […]
