Six stories about making a life of one’s own.
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Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Ibram X. Kendi
The Stamped and How to Be an Antiracist author on the superpower he’d like to have, the outlets he likes to read, and his latest work, Chain of Ideas.
Posted inFeature
Her Greatest Hits
“Maybe it’s only when you don’t know what you are listening for that you find what you were waiting all along to discover.”
Posted inUncategorized
Found Poetry, Marital Musings, and our Top 5
“I peeled the list off the windshield and held it like an artifact: evidence of a life I didn’t know but suddenly cared about. It read like a poem. A confession. What was the story behind this list, I wondered—and what would come for this stranger after the checkout aisle?” I love making lists. They […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Asked ChatGPT To Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart
“After 35 years of living in relative control of my decisions, I had decided to see what would happen if I asked AI to control my life instead.”
Posted inNewsletter
Memories of Motherhood and Our Top 5
“Much of the time, I feel like a girl. A curious girl of 48 who, today, is walking the neighborhood streets with a girl of 13, and listening to what this girl has to say. She happens to be my kid, this person I made, a living being that gave my life a whole new […]
Posted inNonfiction
‘Are We Breaking Apart, Or Is There Enough Left to Bind Us?’
Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.
Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: The Stories You Missed
In a year of exceptional reading, these overlooked stories refused to let us go.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan, Dan McQuade, Crystal Wilkinson, Simon Akam, and Nicholson Baker.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Blue Daniel
“The more the Editor and I talked, almost daily, at this point, the more I sought ways to create space between us—asking about his children, talking about my boyfriend.”
