“Jeanine Cummins can write about Mexico — but she will be judged on whether her writing actually captures the experiential and emotional and ethical complexity of that place, and she will be judged with extra care because she is an outsider.”
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Posted inArts & Culture
Longreads Best of 2019: Arts and Culture
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in arts and culture.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Memoirist’s Dilemma
Fourteen years after her memoir about about her father’s death was released, novelist Aminatta Forna still deals with after-effects, both good and bad.
Posted inNonfiction
The Criminalization of the American Midwife
New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.
Posted inArts & Culture
Longreads Best of 2019: Music Writing
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in music writing.
Posted inCommentary, Nonfiction, Uncategorized
When Richard Nixon Declared War on the Media
Jim Acosta isn’t the first reporter to be barred from the White House—when Stuart Loory reported on the possibility that Richard Nixon was bilking taxpayers, he found himself on the president’s enemies list.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Portrait of the Artist as a Single Mom
In this personal essay, created with support from the non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Stephanie Land chronicles her struggle to support herself and her two daughters while attending college and trying to make a living as a writer.
Posted inNonfiction
The Danger of Befriending Celebrities
Once upon a time, nightlife journalist Michael Musto didn’t set the strongest boundaries with the boldfaced names he covered.
Posted inNonfiction
“What Do I Know To Be True?”: Emma Copley Eisenberg on Truth in Nonfiction, Writing Trauma, and The Dead Girl Newsroom
“We were interested in dead girls, but so interested in them that we were trying to do the opposite of what had been done before.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Afterlife of a Memoir
Novelist Aminatta Forna writes about the lingering effects, fourteen years later, of having written a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, about the political hanging of her father in Sierra Leone.
