Alan Shapiro | Virginia Quarterly Review| Fall 2006 | 20 minutes (4,928 words) Alan Shapiro published two books in January 2012: Broadway Baby, a novel, from Algonquin Books, and Night of the Republic, poetry, from Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt. This essay first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review (subscribe here). Our thanks to Shapiro for allowing us to reprint […]
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Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: Here Are All 49 of Our No. 1 Story Picks From This Year
Every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year.
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Happy 10th Birthday, The Believer!
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, The Believer has just published a handful of classic stories for the first time on the web, and they were nice enough to share them with the Longreads community. Enjoy: Eddie Vedder Interviewed by Carrie Brownstein (June 2004) “Crimes Against the Reader” (Rick Moody, April 2005) “Transmissions from Camp Trans” (Michelle Tea, […]
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Reading List: Love in the Time of Context
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. One reason I admire longform journalism is its ability to tell stories. Some of these stories gain national attention. Some are perfected in an MFA workshop. Some are written on the backs of receipts, after […]
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Longreads Guest Pick: Rustin Dodd on 'The Courage Of Jill Costello'
Rustin Dodd is a sports reporter at The Kansas City Star. For the most part, he spends his time covering Kansas basketball and football, but he has also covered the Kansas City Royals for the last five years. He’s covered two Final Fours, two Major-League All-Star Games and The Masters. He resides in Lawrence, Kan., […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Ricky Rubio Experience
The evolution of a Spanish basketball star turned NBA player, from the perspective of a fellow player: “I was playing in Spain at the time, and was there as the nation slipped into inescapable Rubio-mania. In the grocery store people wanted to talk about him; in our locker room we laughed about the boy who […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Longreads Member Exclusive: The Creature Beyond the Mountains
(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) A look at the giant sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest—one, named Herman, weighs nearly 500 pounds—and about our relationship with them. Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and writes frequently for Orion‘s print edition and blog. His piece won the John Burroughs Award and was […]
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Obama’s Way
Lewis follows the president for six months—joining him for basketball pickup games, a trip on Air Force One, and inside a decision on how to handle Libya: “Before big meetings the president is given a kind of road map, a list of who will be at the meeting and what they might be called on […]
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‘What Happened to Him?’
A high school basketball star’s career derailed by drugs and bad decisions. Jonathan Hargett also says he was offered $20,000 to attend West Virginia (a claim university officials deny): “Hargett wanted to go to Arizona. The Wildcats won the national title in 1997 and had recently had a string of star guards like Miles Simon, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Giant Size
What are your career options when you are seven feet tall? A tall writer meets a tall wrestler: “Paul Wight, bless him, seems to think of his massive size as a gift from God, not a devil’s bargain. There was a moment earlier this year when Wight was rumored to be fighting Shaq at this […]
