Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * * 1. As the Met Abandons Blackface, a Look at the Legacy of African Americans in Opera Alison Kinney | Hyperallergic | Aug. 3, […]
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Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers
The radical women of early Christianity.
The Culture of Video Games: A Reading List
This week’s picks from Emily includes stories from The Guardian, Kotaku, Leigh Alexander, Polygon, and Kill Screen.
Lidia Yuknavitch on Mythologies We Adopt to Make Sense of Violence
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the acclaimed new novel The Small Backs of Children, has a haunting essay up at Guernica about “Laume,” a mythological water spirit and guardian of all children that her Lithuanian grandmother introduced her to when she was young, and about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of violence and […]
Can Time Inc. Save Itself By Becoming the Next Facebook?
When [Joe] Ripp first discussed taking the CEO job with Bewkes, he said that Time Inc. needed to stop thinking of itself as a magazine company. But what exactly Time Inc. will become depends on who is talking. Ripp tells me it will be a significant player in video. (The company has backed the online […]
Longreads Best of 2014: Essay Writing
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in essay writing.
‘She’s Good, With a Capital G’: A Roxane Gay Reading List
A reading list could never do author Roxane Gay justice. For one thing, she’s incredibly prolific. She writes, edits, teaches and tweets. Within the past few months, she’s garnered acclaim for her intense novel, An Untamed State, and her collection of essays, Bad Feminist. These are just the facts. I don’t remember discovering Gay’s work. I remember requesting […]
‘She’s Good, With a Capital G’: A Roxane Gay Reading List
A reading list could never do author Roxane Gay justice. For one thing, she’s incredibly prolific. She writes, edits, teaches and tweets. Within the past few months, she’s garnered acclaim for her intense novel, An Untamed State, and her collection of essays, Bad Feminist. These are just the facts. I don’t remember discovering Gay’s work. I remember requesting […]
On Watching a Person Deteriorate
In the Guardian, an adaptation of The Iceberg, a memoir by Marion Coutts about her husband’s last months after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. She writes: “There is going to be destruction: the obliteration of a person, his intellect, his experience and his agency. I am to watch it. This is my part.” 13 […]
Vagabonds, Crafty Bauds, and the Loyal Huzza: A History of London at Night
In the 16th & 17th centuries, “nightwalking” was a transgressive act in a city still on the brink of total nighttime illumination, but with complex implications depending on your social status.

