All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
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Mark Haddon: ‘Ultimately, There Is No Narrative Without Death’
An conversation with the author about his dark new short story collection, The Pier Falls.
#NoShame in Mental Illness: A Reading List
Here, I’ve collected several stories about mental illness, many written by writers of color.
My Unsentimental Education
“I wanted him to understand my life—that I’d been caught in the local pattern and found the safest way forward, but if I’d lived somewhere else I’d be someone else and still could.”
A Chloe Caldwell Reading List
She’s simply honest, and in an age of Internet posturing, that feels important. Chloe writes about people who are important to her. She’s important to me, so I thought I’d share some of the things she’s taught me.
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.
The Weirdness of Near-Future America
You, Little Sylvia, will come up knowing the truth, but to the rest of the world–to jellyfishes, crackers, finkies, and swells, to Bosom families and Consolidated alike–the stars are not real. The planets are not real. Astronomy, if spoken of al all, is regarded as a delusional cult scarcely more respectable than the Jesus Lovers. […]
Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism
Story picks by Leslie Jamison, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Tom Scocca, Ann Friedman, Rachel Syme, Francesca Mari, Sari Botton, and Emily Perper.
#NoShame in Mental Illness: A Reading List
Here, I’ve collected several stories about mental illness, many written by writers of color.
Looking for Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles
Tracing Raymond Chandler’s early days in L.A.

