Longreads’ Essays Editor on the importance of budgeting for personal narratives.
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Longreads Best of 2017: Arts & Culture Writing
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in arts and culture writing.
Protectors
Do you own your pet, or does your pet own you? This deceptively simple piece of short fiction explores fertility and fragility, and the ways we fail to protect those we love.
When the Movies Went West
Scorned by stage actors and mocked by the theater-going upper classes, filmmakers nevertheless developed a bold new art form — but they needed better weather.
Ugly, Bitter, and True
After years of feeling hopeless and barely human, one talented writer manages to find her will to live.
Moonshine: The Black Tradition of Distilling ‘White Whiskey’
If craft food culture looks overwhelmingly white, it’s because black influences have been routinely scrubbed from its history.
Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Author
The most remarkable thing about Patience Worth wasn’t that she was dead. It was that all she wanted to do was write books.
The Dying Days of the New West
Recent books about the American West turn the old frontier myth into a mirage.
Curiosity, Unfettered: Margaret Atwood as the Prophet of Dystopia
Rebecca Mead’s profile in The New Yorker covers the resonance of The Handmaid’s Tale in Donald Trump’s America.
