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Longreads Best of 2015: Sports Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in sports writing.

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Mina Kimes
Senior Writer at ESPN the Magazine and espn.com.

This is Why NFL Star Greg Hardy was Arrested for Assaulting his Girlfriend (Diana Moskovitz, Deadspin)

Last year, the NFL was rocked by several incidents of domestic violence, starting in September with the release of a video of Ray Rice’s assault of his then-fiancee and peaking in February, when charges against star defensive end Greg Hardy were dismissed after his accuser disappeared. By November, most football fans had moved on. Diana Moskovitz did not. She continued to tirelessly report on the issue, and in November, Deadspin published a devastating scoop: pictures that showed exactly what happened between Hardy and his ex-girlfriend, Nicole Holder, that night in Charlotte. Moskovitz’s piece, which laid out the facts of the case in meticulous detail, forced many to confront what had happened. It also pushed readers to ask why it took photographic evidence to make the world care.

Broke (Spencer Hall, EDSBS)

A common criticism of longform writing, especially on the internet, is that it’s too self-centered; too many features rely on the first person, and too many writers insert themselves into their pieces. This is often true. But sometimes, as with the case of this stunning Spencer Hall essay, it’s an incredibly effective technique.

By juxtaposing the story of his own family’s financial struggles with the larger story of the systematic impoverishment of college athletes, Hall compels readers to look at the issue in a new way: through the lens of personal pain. He shows us that the controversy over whether college athletes should be paid for their services isn’t an intellectual or economic debate, but an ethical one. By denying athletes the right to earn a living, the NCAA forces them to live with the looming threat of financial insecurity—an ache that Hall himself knows all too well. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

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.

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Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. Read more…

Celebrating the Trans Community: A Reading List

Transgender Awareness Week occurs during the beginning of November, traditionally culminating in the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This period serves to amplify the achievements of the trans community, as well as illuminate its struggles. The Transgender Day of Remembrance honors the victims of hate crimes, suicide, murder and countless other violences trans folks face daily.

2015 has not been kind to the trans community. Trans celebrities receive awards and accolades, yet 79 trans-identified folks have been murdered this year. Many of them are women of color. Many were killed by people they knew, people they trusted.

Historically, the complexities of the trans community have been overlooked, its activism whitewashed or erased or ignored completely. Hollywood continues to cast cisgender actors in trans roles, reaffirming these revisionist attitudes. Subconscious, thoughtless or intentional, this is insidious. Erasing the experiences of a community—the good and the bad—erases the community altogether.

Every story is, of course, different, though the American media prizes a certain, clean-cut narrative of triumph over adversity. Trans is an umbrella term; it encompasses a variety of gender identities, a million stories.

I hope something here inspires you to reaffirm your commitment to making this planet safe and welcoming and kind and generous, or shows you that you are not alone. Or both.

We remember. We remain. Read more…

The Politics of Poetry

David Orr | Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry | HarperCollins | 2011 | 18 minutes (4,527 words)

The essay below is excerpted from David Orr’s 2011 book Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry. Orr writes the On Poetry column for The New York Times, and an earlier version of this essay appeared in Poetry Magazine. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photograph by Will Mebane for The New Yorker

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.

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Read more…

On the Other Hand

Jon Irwin | Kill Screen | September 2015 | 22 minutes (5,439 words)

 

We’re excited to present a new Longreads Exclusive from Kill Screen—writer Jon Irwin goes inside the life of a man who helped keep the Muppets alive after Jim Henson’s death. For more from Kill Screen, subscribe. Read more…

The Nine Lives of Cat Videos

Photo: Children posing with life-size Lil Bub. This photo first appeared on Hyperallergic. Courtesy Jillian Steinhauer.

Jillian Steinhauer | Longreads | September 2015 | 15 minutes (3,800 words)

 

The following essay is excerpted from Cat Is Art Spelled Wrong, in which 14 writers address the following question: Why can’t we stop watching cat videos?

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The position that an epoch occupies in the historical process can be determined more strikingly from an analysis of its inconspicuous surface-level expressions than from that epoch’s judgments about itself.

—Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament”

The spectacle creates an eternal present of immediate expectation: memory ceases to be necessary or desirable.

—John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”

The Grandstand filling up with people early in the night. This photo first appeared on Hyperallergic. Courtesy Jillian Steinhauer.

The Grandstand filling up with people early in the night. This photo first appeared on Hyperallergic. Courtesy Jillian Steinhauer.

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One evening in the summer of 2013, I joined 11,499 other people—give or take—at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand to sit and watch cat videos. I had spent the day leading up to the Internet Cat Video Festival (or CatVidFest, as it’s nicknamed) wandering the fair in extreme heat, eating assorted fried foods on sticks, watching butter sculptors, and paying money to take off my shoes and traverse an artsy blow-up castle with “rooms” of saturated color (think Dan Flavin goes to the fair). Hours later, dehydrated and probably sunstroked, I met up with a journalist from Minnesota Public Radio for a brief interview. He wanted to talk to me because I was an art critic, and because I had served as a juror for that year’s CatVidFest. Read more…

The Discovery That Spawned the Synthetic Marijuana Industry

The biological reaction that marijuana triggers in the body had long been a mystery. Scientists could dissect marijuana’s active component — THC — tinker with its structure and conjure synthetic compounds based on that. But they did not know whether THC worked through non-specific interaction with cell membranes or whether it interacted with the brain’s sensory receptors, which read neurochemical messages and tell cells what to do.

Then, in the late 1980s, came the discovery of something called the cannabinoid receptor, which confirmed the latter of the theories. This was the system that THC stimulates. But it was much more than that.

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Its discovery marked a crucial moment in the development of synthetic cannabinoids. Rather than fumbling around in the dark, chemists could aim for a specific target — the cannabinoid receptor. Pioneering researchers started synthesizing fresh compounds to see how the receptor reacted to them.

“It took the black-magic aspect of marijuana’s activity and gave it a biomolecular mechanism in your body,” said Brian F. Thomas, a principal scientist with RTI International, a research institute. “Because you had this cannabinoid receptor, you could then look and find new compounds that can bind to that receptor.”

Terrence McCoy, writing in the Washington Post about John W. Huffman, a Clemson University chemist who unintentionally helped spawn Washington D.C.’s synthetic drug epidemic. Huffman was the first person to synthesize many of the cannabinoids used in synthetic cannabis. 

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‘Puro Amor’: A New Short Story by Sandra Cisneros

Still Life with Parrot and Fruit image via Flickr

The truth was that the Mister had always been dishonest. Not with his feelings but with his heart. He would be the first to tell you how honest he was about his dishonesties. He was like a chronic bed-wetter; he could not control himself. He would always be a bed-wetter even if he were not given a drop to drink. He had no wish to overcome this weakness. A big overgrown child indulging in whatever he saw, his eyes bigger than his pajarito.

And so Missus Rivera surrounded herself with animals. For what could be better than creatures when one has been betrayed, what finer emblem of loyalty and steadfastness and pure love.

Puro amor y amor puro. That’s what each pet gave her, pure and clean. Pure love and only love. Who wouldn’t want that?

“¿Quién quiere amor?” Missus called out. It was as if she was giving away treats and not simply love, for the creatures rose from all corners of the house and courtyard…

…The Guacamaya, who had the most acute hearing of all the household, stretched out his feathered neck, revealing flesh as pink as a toreador’s stockings, batted magnificent wings, bobbed like a prizefighter, the black orbs of his eyes growing larger, then smaller, larger, smaller, until finally he shrieked with wicked pleasure, “¿Quién quiere amor?” in the voice of a crone, as if making a mockery of the Missus.

-From “Puro Amor,” a new short story by The House on Mango Street author Sandra Cisneros–seemingly based on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera–in The Washington Post’s 2015 Fiction Issue (second story, below one by Curtis Sittenfeld and above another one by Padgett Powell).

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