According to a lawsuit, Harper Lee’s agent Samuel Pinkus duped the To Kill a Mockingbird author to assign him the copyright to her only book. An investigation into Lee’s fight to regain the book’s copyright, which continues to earn millions of dollars in royalties: “His first move was to obtain the copyright to To Kill […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Interview: ‘Poor Teeth’ Writer Sarah Smarsh on Class and Journalism
“There often is a ‘tone’ in writing about the poor. There is a presumption that people of a certain class are mired in misery.”
Posted inNonfiction
Interview: Vela Magazine Founder Sarah Menkedick on Women Writers and Sustainable Publishing
An Q&A with Sarah Menkedick.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
How to Spell the Rebel Yell
What did the Civil War sound like?
About Us
Longreads, founded in 2009 by Mark Armstrong, is dedicated to finding and sharing the best longform nonfiction storytelling on the web. We publish personal and reported essays, criticism, reading lists, and occasional book excerpts, interviews, and more in-depth features. Longreads has been nominated for four National Magazine Awards (and won a 2020 ASME for Best Digital […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: The 10 Stories We Couldn't Stop Thinking About
A list of stories that resonated with us.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Elizabeth Gilbert and the Art of Ignoring Rejection
“I was just so committed, and I did have six years of rejection letters. And it really didn’t break my heart. Some of them made me really excited because some of them had little handwritten notes at the bottom. Pretty good, but not our thing. And I was like, I got a really great handwritten […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash
An interview with Robin Nagle, the New York City Department of Sanitation’s Anthropologist in Residence who has spent most of her life studying trash: “In its early days, the department didn’t really function at all. There are some photographs taken for Harper’s Weekly, before and after photos of street corners in New York in 1893 […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Longreads Member Exclusive: Graveyards, by Scott McClanahan
This week’s Longreads Member pick is “Graveyards,” a short story by Scott McClanahan about a family visit to the cemetery. The piece was published last year in Harper Perennial’s Forty Stories collection, and it will appear in McClanahan’s forthcoming book Crapalachia, a portrait of growing up in rural West Virginia, published by Two Dollar Radio. Support Longreads—and […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Longreads Member Exclusive: Contest of Words, by Ben Lerner
This week’s Longreads Member pick is “Contest of Words,” Ben Lerner‘s October 2012 essay from Harper’s Magazine. Lerner is author of the award-winning 2011 novel Leaving the Atocha Station and three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw and Mean Free Path. The story comes recommended by Matt O’Rourke, a longtime Longreads community member and creative director for Wieden […]
