When a car plummets into a remote lake in British Columbia with a five-year-old boy trapped inside, a group of strangers must spring into action to save him: John resurfaced for air. By now Mark had manoeuvred the boat and was tossing life jackets to a few bystanders floundering in the lake. John went under […]
Search results
Honey, I Want To Move To Mars
My wife is a semifinalist to board a one-way mission to the Red Planet. I’m proud, happy, and thrilled for her. Now, do you want to know how I really feel about i? I might have suggested another couple of words in response to that particular question, but I know better than most that the […]
I Was A Love-Letter Ghostwriter
The writer on working on art piece called the “Love Letter Project,” in which she ghostwrote love letters fro strangers: I listened until he was finished talking. Then I arranged the sentences he’d spoken on the page. It was more like transcribing than writing. I will never in my life not regret that we didn’t […]
A Dangerous Mind
Examining the case and trial of Gilberto Valle, AKA the “cannibal cop,” a New York police officer who fantasized about kidnapping, killing, and eating women he knew with strangers, but who never acted on any of his plans: On August 24, they discussed ways that Valle might kidnap another woman, Kristen Ponticelli, a recent graduate […]
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
#Nightshift: Excerpts from an Instagram Essay
Jeff Sharlet | Longreads | September 2014 | 12 minutes (2,802 words) 1. Snapshots Dunkin Donuts, West Lebanon, New Hampshire The night shift, for me, is a luxury, the freedom to indulge my insomnia by writing at a Dunkin Donuts, one of the only places up here open at midnight. But lately my insomnia doesn’t […]
Your Inner Drone: The Politics of the Automated Future
“As we grow more reliant on applications and algorithms, we become less capable of acting without their aid.”
Call It Rape
Margot Singer | The Normal School | 2012 | 23 minutes (5,683 words) The Normal SchoolThanks to Margot Singer and The Normal School for sharing this story with the Longreads community.Subscribe to The Normal School * * * Still life with man and gun Three girls are smoking on the back porch of their high […]
Curses: A Tribute to Losing Teams and Easy Scapegoats
Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words) 1st Late in every February, Major League Baseball players report to Spring Training. Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the […]
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
“There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.”
