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 […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
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 […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
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 […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
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 […]
Posted inNonfiction
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
Posted inNonfiction
#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 […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
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.”
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
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 […]
Posted inNonfiction
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 […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction
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.”
