“My treasured memories, I’ve learned, are all subsidized by a massive Fish Industrial Complex—one that has taken a toll on all sorts of insects, invertebrates, frogs, and salamanders.” In the summer of 2014, Alex Brown went on a life-changing backpacking trip in the Colorado wilderness. On that trip, he caught 50 trout, keeping a few […]
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The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Julian Brave NoiseCat
The author of We Survived the Night and co-director of Sugarcane responds to our 25 questions on writing, reading, and creativity.
Days of the Jackal
How Andrew Wylie turned serious literature into big business.
Guatemala’s Baby Brokers: How Thousands of Children Were Stolen for Adoption
“From the 1960s, baby brokers persuaded often Indigenous Mayan women to give up newborns while kidnappers ‘disappeared’ babies.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Hannah Dreier, Doug Bock Clark, Samanth Subramanian, Michael Hobbes, Jonathan Cohn, Kate Sheppard, Alex Kaufman, Delphine D’Amora, Chris D’Angelo, and Emily Peck, and Kris Willcox and Michelle Ruiz.
Between the Lines with Neal Allen, Anne Lamott, and Kory Stamper
The Longreads questionnaire with Neal Allen and Anne Lamott, a book excerpt from Kory Stamper, and our Top 5 Longreads of the week.
Fit to Be Tied (and the Week’s Top 5)
“When most of us build or buy a home, we carefully appraise the neighborhood. In Malibu the neighborhood is fire. Fire that revisits the coastal mountains several times a decade. In the past sixty years, ten of these frequent events have turned into all-consuming firestorms.” Welcome to 2025, friends. Peter here. As it does all too often, […]
Impersonation Nation: A Very Scammy Reading List
Five stories that demonstrate we’re living in the golden age of the personal hoax.
Burgling the Rich, a Cat’s Life Lessons, and Our Top 5
“I learned to adore the way he sidled against me and to hate his momentary affection, just as he learned to detach from me in weariness and depend on me in hunger. Days with him were a quick education in a cat’s existence.” I once spent a year shadowing a musician I loved, whose body […]
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 […]


