While my uncle was dying from a rare cancer, he found solace in a hotel whose staff became a surrogate family.
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Best of 2020
Our year-end collection includes story picks for crime reporting, science, sports, essays, and more.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Kevin Fagan, Sarah Ravani, Lauren Hepler, and J.K. Dineen, Eric Boodman, Gabrielle Anctil, Joe Hagan, and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee.
Longreads Best of 2019: Music Writing
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in music writing.
Miami: A Beginning
Jessica Lynne remembers a long distance love affair that began in Miami and the Billie Holiday song that kept her company through the relationship’s transitions.
Welcome to Hive
Hive is a new Longreads series about women and the music that has influenced them.
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
The Godmother of Soul
At Oxford American, as part of their Southern Music Issue, Rosanne Cash celebrates the life and career of electric guitar pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, an American singer and guitarist who influenced Elvis, Keith Richards, and Johnny Cash. “She traveled the world and left it scorched with her fearlessness and musical originality, inspired fierce devotion from […]
Black America Unwittingly Provided the Soundtrack to Its Own Displacement
American music may be Black music, but it has now become the music of displacement.

