Inspired by her governess, the radical feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret King cast aside her immense privilege, cross-dressed as a man to go to medical school, and inspired a new generation of women to push against the rigid conventions of their era.
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Posted inQuotes
The Cult Could Become a Church: On David Foster Wallace
If you’ve never heard of this acclaimed author, treasure your last moments of innocence; then, read this primer at Vulture on DFW’s contested legacy.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Postwar New York: The Supreme Metropolis of the Present
Forty labor strikes on one day, French existentialists on the loose, and a 50-foot G.I. blowing enormous puffs of REAL smoke.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Lorrie Moore on Her First Encounter with Miranda July
“When it came time for July to speak, she stood up and started singing. She was large-eyed and lithe. I don’t remember what song it was—something she had written herself, I believe. I was startled. Who was this woman?”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Posted inBooks, Editor's Pick, Fiction
The House Made of Sugar
A Longreads Exclusive: The newly translated short story from Silvina Ocampo’s collection, Thus Were Their Faces.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Limits, or How to Avoid the Precipice Between Courage and Humility
I need to tell you about the Cirque of the Unclimbables. Ever since I went there, I’ve tried to describe it to friends and family, tried to explain its power and its perfection. It is, I tell people, the best natural campsite I have ever visited. It’s also among the most beautiful eyefuls of landscape […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
Laura van den Berg’s First Novel Explores Illness, Immunity, and Isolation
Three things brought me to the hospital. In my first month, in the library, I wrote it all out on sheets of paper and pretended I was telling someone a story. Number one: the sickness itself. The first case was reported in June, in Bakersfield, California, when a fifty-year-old woman named Clara Sue Borden stumbled […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Did Amazon Sink the Queen of Online Erotica?
Tina Engler, the author and founder of Ellora’s Cave, was an early pioneer in erotic fiction with great success. As recently as 2012 the company was netting more than $10 million per year. But since then, things have gone downhill fast.
