Search Results for: fiction

How I Met My Wife

Longreads Pick

Novelist Robert Boswell tells the story of how he met his wife, the author Antonya Nelson, and uses the story to explore how fiction is crafted:

“Why are we drawn to stories about people falling in love? There are likely a host of reasons, but here’s a good one: marriage, when observed from a place of solitude, has the power of dream. Solitary people fall in love with couples, imagining their own lives transformed by such a union. And once the transformation finally happens, people need to talk about it, telling not only their families, friends, and strangers on the bus but also themselves—repeating it to make it real, to investigate the mystery of marital metamorphosis. And they get good at the telling. People who cannot otherwise put together an adequately coherent narrative to get you to the neighborhood grocery will nonetheless have a beautifully shaped tale of how he met she (or he met he, or she met she) and became we.”

Source: Tin House
Published: Jun 3, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,468 words)

Our Longreads Member Pick: Among Murderers (Chapter 7), by Sabine Heinlein

This week’s Member Pick is a chapter from Among Murderers, a new nonfiction book by Sabine Heinlein, published by University of California Press, examining the lives of criminals as they prepare to re-enter society. Heinlein, who was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her Iowa Review essay “A Portrait of the Writer as a Rabbit,” explains the origins of this chapter, which focuses on “Job Readiness”:
 

“A few years ago I set out to learn how New York’s reentry organizations help former prisoners navigate freedom. I talked to clients and staff and observed programs at nonprofit agencies with Pollyanna-ish names like STRIVE (Support and Training Results in Valuable Employees), CEO (Center for Employment Opportunities) and the Fortune Society. The Fortune Society is New York’s most prominent and comprehensive reentry agency. It offers substance abuse treatment to ex-offenders, as well as computer, cooking, fatherhood and ‘job readiness’ classes. Fortune, as it is commonly known, also runs a halfway house in West Harlem nicknamed the Castle. I clearly remember the first time I visited the Castle, its schist rock facade sparkling in the sun. With its miniature lookout towers, its arched windows and the bright crenellations that top some of its walls, the Castle resembled a Gothic bastion. One could easily imagine a muddy moat separating those who had committed serious transgressions—those who had been stigmatized and locked away for most of their lives—from the rest of the world.
 
“To shed light on the struggles of the 700,000 men and women who are released from U.S. prisons each year, I followed three residents of the Castle for several years. Angel Ramos, the protagonist of my book, Among Murderers: Life After Prison, spent 29 years in prison for strangling a young girl in an abandoned building in East Harlem and for trying to kill a co-worker. At the Castle, the 47-year-old befriended two older men, Bruce and Adam, who had also spent several decades locked up for murder. Over the course of more than two years Angel, Bruce, Adam and I spent a lot of time with each other. I accompanied Adam when he bought his first winter coat in 31 years and visited different ethnic restaurants and cafés with Bruce. I helped celebrate Angel’s ‘first’ birthday and was there when, on Halloween, the halfway house residents turned the Castle into a haunted house. Together, the men and I explored the neighborhoods of their youth. We talked about murder, remorse, shame, love, loss and prison. (Sooner or later our conversations inevitably returned to prison, where the men had spent most of their adult lives.)
 
“One of the most revealing experiences the men shared with me was their seemingly endless track through New York’s job readiness programs, a requirement to qualify for housing subsidies, welfare and the agencies’ employment referrals. This is what I saw.”

Read an excerpt here.

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Our Longreads Member Pick: Among Murderers (Chapter 7), by Sabine Heinlein

Longreads Pick

This week’s Member Pick is a chapter from Among Murderers, a new nonfiction book by Sabine Heinlein, published by University of California Press, examining the lives of criminals as they prepare to re-enter society. Heinlein, who was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her Iowa Review essay “A Portrait of the Writer as a Rabbit,” explains the origins of this chapter, which focuses on “Job Readiness.”

Published: Jun 7, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,132 words)

Reading List: 6 Great Sci-Fi Stories About Robots

Ray Bradbury. Photo by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, and a reading list for Fantasy Newbies.

These stories offer a little breadth, a little curiosity, and a little levity to the idea of artificial life. Read more…

Reading List: 6 Great Sci-Fi Stories About Robots

Longreads Pick

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She also happens to love science fiction, so this week, she put together a #longreads list about robots.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 5, 2013

Brotherly Love

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] Two brothers begin to drift apart in India during the late ’60s after one decides to study in the U.S. and the other becomes a Naxalite:

“Richard asked Subhash about India, about its caste system, its poverty. Who was to blame?

“I don’t know. These days everyone just blames everyone else.

“But is there a solution? Where does the government stand?

“Subhash didn’t know how to describe India’s fractious politics, its complicated society, to an American. He said it was an ancient place that was also young, still struggling to know itself. You should be talking to my brother, he said.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 3, 2013
Length: 56 minutes (14,192 words)

Six Stories for the Fantasy Newbie

Jorge Luis Borges. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, so next up, she’s tackling fantasy. 

George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series is a crossover hit. However, there are still skeptics who view fantasy as children’s fables and tales exclusively for young adults—or you might just find GRRM’s enormous tomes a little intimidating.

Luckily, fantasy short stories offer us the depth of narrative we require and the fantastic elements we crave. Here is a collection of my favorite new and old gems, available online for free. Read more…

Reading List: 6 Stories for the Fantasy Newbie

Longreads Pick

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She recently shared six stories for the science-fiction newbie, so next up, she’s tackling fantasy.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 30, 2013
Length: 1 minutes (442 words)

articles read & loved no. 53

dietcoker:

Emily Perper!

Anatomy of a Cosplayer

Longreads Pick

A profile of a woman who participates in and builds props for cosplayers—fans who dress up as their favorite fictional characters:

“The first time Tysk worked with wood was to ramp up the unique-factor of one of her own costumes. Cid Highwind from the Square Enix classic Final Fantasy 7 is not an uncommon character to find in the cosplay wild; his outfit is simple, the character is iconic among JRPG fans and the game itself is one of the most popular of all time. Tysk wanted to dress up as Cid, and was determined to make herself stand out from other Cid cosplayers. So she suited up, grabbed some wood and paint and clay, and made herself the character’s trademark spear.

“Once she knew she could successfully make props, she decided to share her new skills by making weapons for her friends. Over the span of a few months, she shaped hunks of wood and plastic into daggers, swords, claws and even a realistic chainsaw.”

Source: Polygon
Published: May 7, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,616 words)