This week, we’re sharing stories from Brian Trapp, Alison Kinney, Kate Wagner, Willy Staley, and Suzannah Showler.
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Hollywood and the New Female Grotesque
Actresses are being lauded for pushing their supposed undesirability to the extreme, and it’s redefining how we see women.
Secret Museums
Struggling with the world’s, and his own, homophobia, one queer young man searches for intimacy in the world of internet porn.
Performance Art: On Sharing Culture
With physical distancing the order of the day as COVID-19 spreads, cultural locales — sites for communal experiences, like museums and theaters — are emptying out. What are we sharing if we’re not sharing these spaces? And were we really sharing them to begin with?
All Mom’s Friends
Svetlana Kitto recalls her 1980s childhood in Hollywood during the early years of the AIDS crisis.
Walking the Line in the Bekaa Valley
A traveling crew of slackliners is trying to bring a moment of balance to young Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Whatever Happened to ______ ?
Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.
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.
Karina Longworth on the Women Caught in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood Web of Gossip
Howard Hughes used gossip, spies and money to control Hollywood’s women for nearly 60 years. Karina Longworth critically examines the Golden Age’s gossip to stop his false narratives from becoming our history.
The Dead End on My Record Shelf
I believed that there was no music existing in the world with an unbroken connection to its original context. I was wrong.

