“You can practice a song a thousand times and still its first note sends you into the unknown.”
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Posted inEditor's Pick
My Trans Awakening—at Age 66
“The day I came out to her, it was like the sun shone for the first time.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Child Star at 7, in Prison at 22. Then She Vanished. What Happened to Lora Lee Michel?
“Hollywood is notorious for erasing people. But her sister and nieces refused to forget Lora Lee Michel.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Year I Was Supposed to Die
“At 42, with young kids, I got a devastating diagnosis. I knew I was in for a harrowing journey. I didn’t know quite what kind.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing
“Why do some people find certain sounds intolerable? And why has it taken so long for scientists to get even a preliminary answer?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Father Could Have Changed the World. Instead, He Changed Mine
“He embodied the traits of our great ancestors—but ended up a drug dealer who broke his family.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Once Fell for the Fantasy of Uploading Ourselves. It’s a Destructive Vision.
“In the early 2000s, I spent hundreds of hours trying to upload my mind to the web.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Patrick Radden Keefe
The New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book London Falling on running, writing in the morning, a life-changing childhood trip, and more.
Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: The Stories You Missed
In a year of exceptional reading, these overlooked stories refused to let us go.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Pizzastroika
“In 1990, in the last breaths of the Cold War, a delicious act of American subversion unfolded in Moscow. It’s long been forgotten. It shouldn’t be.”
