Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The student journalist, the Afghani mother, the elderly custodian, the Chinese orphan boy: each of these pieces forces the reader to stop and consider the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people. 1. “At 99, A St. Petersburg Man Finds Meaning […]
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Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
“I never figured out why they did that to me.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, First Chapters, Story
First Chapter: Dave Eggers’ Novel, ‘Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?’
“We know each other, Kev. From way back. And I didn’t want to bring you here like this.”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Reading List: 21 Outstanding Stories from Women's Magazines and Websites
Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious. The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as […]
Posted inUncategorized
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 inUncategorized
Reading List: One in Seven Billion
Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The student journalist, the Afghani mother, the elderly custodian, the Chinese orphan boy: each of these pieces forces the reader to stop and consider the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people. 1. “At 99, A St. Petersburg Man Finds Meaning […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Nora Ephron’s Final Act
Nora Ephron’s son Jacob on his mother’s last days, and the play she was working on that helped her understand her own sickness and impending death: “In the play my mother wrote, there’s a scene toward the end, in which McAlary, sick with cancer, goes to the Poconos to visit his friend Jim Dwyer, then […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax
A college football star learns about the death of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day and has inspirational stories written about him by major media outlets. But there’s a problem: His girlfriend never existed: “There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te’o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Jerry Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up
Joke-telling as a muscle: “Since Richard Pryor, at least, confession has been prized in stand-up, and this is as true today as ever. The biggest stand-up story of 2012 came this summer, when the comedian Tig Notaro took a Los Angeles stage and wrung laughs from a saga of personal misery that included the sudden […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
You Owe Me
On teaching writing to children at a Houston cancer center. Featured in The Best American Essays 2012: “The children I write with die, no matter how much I love them, no matter how creative they are, no matter how many poems they have written, or how much they want to live. They die of diseases […]
