John Jeremiah Sullivan’s profile of American folk singer, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Rihannon Giddens includes a history of the influential, but little known black antebellum fiddler Frank Johnson, as well as the 1898 racial massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina.
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Posted inStory
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2021
Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 304 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2020. Here are his favorites.
Posted inReading List
Home Again, Home Again: A Reading List
Eight stories that explore the theme, “home.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story, Writing
Derivative Sport: The Journalistic Legacy of David Foster Wallace
Editors and writers discuss the ways David Foster Wallace’s work influenced them and what it was like to work with him.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
How Did the Blues Become the Blues?
In one simple sentence in 1914, Columbus Bragg, an African American writer, helped codify the Blues genre, though he’s largest forgotten.
Posted inArts & Culture, Commentary, Current Events
Michael, Aretha, Beyoncé, and the Black Press
The Black press has always been where Black artists could have their work spoken about with integrity.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Curses: Part I
In the first part of his two-part essay in the redesigned Sewanee Review, John Jeremiah Sullivan examines the hazy, complicated roots of the Blues, going deep into Early Blues before, where he finds forgotten African-American journalist and performer Columbus Bragg, the first person to describe a song as a “blues song,” and another wrinkle in […]
Posted inBlog Post, Reading List
Celebrating a Second Independence Day: A Juneteenth Reading List
Nine stories that explain the fraught history of the holiday, and the need for celebration.Â
Posted ininvestigations, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
This Is How a Woman Is Erased From Her Job
After taking over from George Plimpton, Brigid Hughes was pushed out as the editor of The Paris Review and omitted from the magazine’s history.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
John Jeremiah Sullivan Discovers the Secret of the Quince
The quinces were weird. We didn’t know what to make of them, figuratively or literally. Did people eat them? They could have come from space. In fact on Sesame Street there used to be a skit that involved two aliens. They couldn’t reach the fruit on their planet’s fruit trees. One alien was too short, […]
