This week’s edition highlights stories by Megan Greenwell, Kerry Howley, Jeremy B. Jones, Marian Bull, and Ava Kofman.
Search results
Rabbit Holes Aplenty and the Week’s Top 5
“What could have fizzled out as a weekend infatuation turned into a full-blown obsession, an online epic quest. After the festival, I decided that a dulcimer was something I really needed, but I never just need things; I also crave learning about them deeply from the people who already know.” Who among us has never fallen into […]
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
A Couple’s Awakening and the Week’s Top 5
“Both marriage and religion had required exile from ourselves, a systematic suppression of our true identities. It was an adaptation that felt necessary for survival. But as I watched D explore, interrogate, and reinvent womanhood, changing the rules before my eyes, I wondered if I had been wrong.” Happy Friday, even if (in the Northern […]
Predator or Prey
“I still want to feel each meal, each touch, each body I absorb into mine.”
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Human ingenuity in the face of crumbling infrastructure. One man’s quest to save a bird that might already be extinct. The cultural schism dividing a major musical genre. A personal essay braiding space and family. And a jungle trek gone horribly, horribly awry. These are our editors’ favorite reads of the week. 1. The Balkans’ […]
A banger of a Christmas story, best of 2023, and more
“I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 […]
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we’re sharing stories from Nick Bowlin, Rachel Priest and Emily Strasser, Rachel Yoder, Jake Skeets, and Willa Paskin.
Finding the Way Home and The Week’s Top 5
“I explain my original plan to catch a ferry into Nova Scotia and ride the Cabot Trail on the province’s northern reaches. I don’t tell him that I can’t go home until I learn something. What, I don’t know. Nevermind how.” Hello and welcome to the weekend! We’ve got a new feature, an excerpt, and […]
The Lessons of Lore
Ghost stories reveal our collective anxieties amid times of change.


