Angela Carter’s short story “The Merchant of Shadows” first appeared in The London Review of Books in 1989. Set in Hollywood, the narrator is a young, male student conducting research on a famed but mysterious director. The story bends and twists, ricocheting between dark comedy, deep camp, and Carter’s signature surreal, Gothic sensibility. Carter was an ardent fan […]
Search results
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
The Restless Ghosts of Baiersdorf
A small German town is haunted by its Jewish legacy and antisemitic past.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2016: Under-Recognized Stories
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in under-recognized stories.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
A Shot in the Arm
Why would a tenure-track professor find himself selling his plasma to make rent? A story about debt in the academic world.
Posted inFiction, Reading List
10 Outstanding Short Stories To Read in 2017
Stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Chabon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and more.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Life as a Teenage Girl, Living with Doris Lessing
It was a famously cold winter. I’d come from a snowbound Hove, where I’d spent hours sitting and brooding, wrapped up but shivering on the frozen pebbled beach staring out at an icy sea, writing poetry about seagulls and loneliness (no longer extant, thank heavens, though that’s not to say that I wouldn’t write about […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction
A Shot in the Arm
Why would a tenure-track professor find himself selling his plasma to make rent? A story about debt in the academic world.
Posted inNonfiction
Little Government in the Big Woods
Melissa Gilbert’s lost bid for Congress and the forgotten political history of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’
