A ‘90s romance novel offers a glimpse of queer possibility and illuminates the complications of writing about queer love.
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Out There I Have to Smile
Heather Lanier explores the pressure to perform happiness.
The Backcountry Prescription Experiment
Mathina Calliope goes off her antidepressant and into the woods.
The Fracking Lottery
“When I moved to Billtown, I worried most about whether fracking tainted groundwater. By the time I left the area, my biggest concern was whether the liberty granted to citizens to lease their land, or to otherwise act in ways that limits others’ access to environmental goods, taints democracy.”
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2021
Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 304 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2020. Here are his favorites.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Masha Gessen, Molly Osberg, T. S. Mendola, Alexander Chee, and George Murray.
Sleeping with Amazon
Sometimes it’s not who you work with, but who you work for.
To Be, or Not to Be
A personal essay in which Russian emigre Masha Gessen ruminates on the culture’s tendency to privilege those who’ve suffered for a lack of choice — in becoming refugees, in picking their gender — and the choices (her own, and those of her parents and ancestors) that have impacted her life.
Summer Mother
Michael A. Gonzales recounts the life lessons of a favorite auntie.

