Our favorite personal essays published this year include stories on loss, Indigenous community, video games, caring for aging relatives, and the fear of missing love.
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Posted inFeature
A Year in Reading: The Dark Side of Progress
We’re moving farther, faster, than ever before. But we’re also destabilizing crucial areas of human experience.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Most Surveilled Place in America
Southwestern Arizona isn’t home to much in the way of urban development. Between Yuma and Tucson, there’s just a whole lot of Sonoran wilderness — the desolate territory migrants coming across the Mexican border have to navigate on their way to safety. But as Gaby Del Valle chronicles, the searing arid heat and unforgiving mountains […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism
Poets in the Machine
Why does the literary world still hold online writing at arm’s length?
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Aaron Parsley, David Peisner, Leah Zani, Joseph Earl Thomas, and Matt Reynolds.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Oliver Whang, Shannon Mattern, Niko McCarty and Xander Balwit, Josh Dzieza, and Sam Parker.
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories about celebrity look-alikes, siblings, desert living, philanthrocapitalism, and life inside a legal brothel.
Posted inNewsletter
Holograms of the Holocaust (and Our Top 5)
“Over many decades, my grandmother gave responses to thousands of questions, wrote tens of thousands of words, and spoke for hours and hours while tapes rolled. She would be, in other words, the perfect candidate for AI reanimation.” In my household, the transition from summer to fall has been tough. Lately, to help my daughter […]
Posted inUncategorized
A lifelong labor of love, Nigerian “Yahoo Boys,” and the week’s top 5
“Over the course of 33 years, Gittins painstakingly transformed almost every surface of this flat with a series of artworks in a variety of styles and mediums, from friezes on the walls of his living room to a Roman altar in his kitchen and enormous, ambitious fireplaces (yes, multiple).” Hello and welcome to the Top […]
Posted inUncategorized
Writing Through It (and the Week’s Top 5)
“I don’t get creatively unstuck. I just write despite the fact that I’m stuck. I learned a long time ago that being ‘stuck’ is really just the unshakable belief that everything you can think of writing is shit, and while that may be true, it might also not be, and the biggest predictor of whether […]
