“The implication is that to exist within a community or to practice a craft out of passion and joy is not success. To many, maybe, that is true. But how limited is our potential, our community, our creativity when success is defined like that?” Does anyone remember that this week started out with an extra […]
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Into the Belly of the Whale With Sjón
“His books dance — with light, quick steps, never breaking eye contact — all over the line between the mythic and the mundane.”
“They Took Us Away From Each Other”: Lost Inside America’s Shadow Foster System
“It would take years before Molly and Heaven would learn that neither of them was ever in the foster system. Instead, caseworkers had diverted them to what some scholars call ‘hidden foster care’ or ‘shadow foster care,’ in which the legal protections of the formal system disappear.”
Extraordinary Circumstances
Kenneth Watkins’s son, Kenny, was 6 days old when he was taken away by ACS, New York City’s child-welfare agency. Kenny was then placed with an affluent foster family. To regain custody, Watkins had to prove that being poor didn’t make him a bad father. Despite Watkins’ constant efforts, it took years to get Kenny […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Skip Hollandsworth, Kory Grow and Jason Newman, Jordan Kisner, Clare Fieseler, and Jessica Klein.
Best of 2023: Profiles
The profiles we loved in 2023 cover a Uvalde mom turned gun-control advocate, Ginni and Clarence Thomas, a love letter to Louisiana and two unrelated women born there in 1953, the man behind the Twitter persona “Dril,” and an underdog surfer nicknamed “Casual Luke.”
On Resilience and Our Top 5
“It is hard, I think, to learn as an adult. This is not some profound statement. It just is. But it is not hard because of the fact of it; it is hard because learning anything means learning again how to learn. It’s not that riding a bike is hard; it’s that learning is hard. […]
Diving into 2024 with an Excerpt and Our Top 5
“She did live. She had to wear a catheter for several weeks, but she got better. The long recovery gave Debra time to think on what she wanted to do about the man who had hurt her.” Welcome to 2024! We are back for another year of editors’ picks, stirring originals, and inspiring reading lists. Kicking […]
Enduring Battles, a Musical Childhood, and Our Top 5
“I felt like a rat trapped in a maze with no finish, running into walls and getting electrocuted at every turn. I wanted out of the hellscape I’d created, but I had formed a whole identity around the latticework of visible bones and tendons; my days were structured around the denial of food. To give […]


