“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 […]
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The Thrill of the Perfect Ending: A Chat With the Writer and Editor Behind The Atavist’s New Issue
In this excerpt from The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, host Brendan O’Meara talks to Greg Donahue and Atavist editor Jonah Ogles about their work on “The Fugitive Next Door.”
The Very Public Library, Food as Fuel, and Our Top 5
“It’s our least popular and most enforced rule: we don’t allow people to sleep in the library. We know you’re tired, we know it’s warm, we know it feels safe. But someone who is dying also looks like someone who is sleeping, and we’ve all seen our share of overdoses. Also, if one person is […]
Our Year in Reading and the Week’s Top 5
Every story changes our mind in some small way. They’re already in implicit conversation with one another, and our “Year in Reading” series acknowledges that.
The Children of War and Our Top 5 Stories of the Week
“When there’s a long, deafening roar outside that makes the windows tremble, or a series of more distant thumps, I’m the only one who flinches. The baby wriggles, then sleeps.” This coming weekend, the clock falls back for many of our readers and we’ve got some excellent stories to help fill that found hour. In […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Rukmini Callimachi, Annie Waldman and Joshua Kaplan, Jesmyn Ward, Hillery Stone, and Alice Driver.
The Good Catholics of Buffalo
With thousands of US soldiers dying in Vietnam, a righteous group of young New Yorkers embarked on a secret mission to bring the war machine to its knees.
Trusting Your Gut and This Week’s Top 5
“I study the pinch pot in my hands. It seems suddenly urgent not to see them seeing me. Heat crawls from my cheeks to my hairline. I hear the furious thrum of blood in my ears. With my fingers I smooth down the walls of my pot. To my utter relief, no more questions follow.” […]
Shifting Identity, Shamans, and the Week’s Top 5
“So long as there are nations, there will be people trying to get out of them, tracking ceaselessly from one to the other while maybe wishing they could belong to the world instead.” In making a cross-country move recently, I realized that I can be a different person in a new place. There’s a certain […]
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.


