“When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say ‘all kinds,’ but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.” – Leslie Jamison This week, Choose Your Own Adventure with Leslie Jamison. I’ve compiled a […]
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Posted inUncategorized
The Politics of Human Waste
“Shit, for some, has had curative or life-extending properties. Martin Luther is reputed to have swallowed a spoonful of his own every day. Laporte writes that an 18th-century woman explicitly hired a young man to divest himself of his shit every night so that she might spread it on her face. That was apparently the […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Looking Back on 'The X-Files': A Reading List
I watched “The X-Files” in a Baltimore house I shared with eight people, at the end of days spent navigating the city’s shaky public transit system, alternating between feeling perfectly in place and wildly lost. That’s how I felt when I watch “The X-Files,” too: One moment I was perfectly attuned to Agents Mulder & […]
Posted inUncategorized
The McRib Economy
From Willy Staley’s now-classic conspiracy theory about the McDonald’s McRib sandwich, in the Awl.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Gothic Life and Times of Horace Walpole
Two-hundred and fifty years ago, Horace Walpole published ‘The Castle of Otranto,’ a strange, campy book that’s widely considered to be the first Gothic novel. In real life, Walpole’s family was beset by tragedy and his life’s obsession was a Gothic castle called Strawberry Hill.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Interview: Maya Rao on Spending a Month Working as a Cashier in the Bakken
On “being a woman in a place where women could be in demand as much as the oil”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Making the Magazine: A Reading List
27 must-read stories on the making of the world’s greatest magazines.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Reading List: Leslie Jamison, Author of ‘The Empathy Exams’
“When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say ‘all kinds,’ but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.” – Leslie Jamison This week, Choose Your Own Adventure with Leslie Jamison. I’ve compiled a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
On Muppets & Merchandise: How Jim Henson Turned His Art into a Business
In 2011, we highlighted an essay called “Weekend at Kermie’s,” by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens, published by The Awl. Stevens is now back with a new Muppet-inspired Kindle Serial called “Make Art Make Money,” part how-to, part Jim Henson history: “The real breakthrough in Henson’s career—the thing that would make him a mogul—was Sesame Street. It […]
