What can an object tell us about a person’s life? Deborah Lutz investigates the mystery of an amethyst bracelet woven with Emily and Anne Brontë’s hair to explore the rich lives and tragic deaths of the Bronte siblings.
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Vera Nabokov, Eugen Boissevain, Leonard Woolf: On Spouses Who Supported Their Famous Partner's Writing Careers
At the Atlantic, Koa Beck writes about the spouses of famous writers who supported their partner’s writing careers, often devoting their lives to it. Vera Nabokov epitomized this: She not only performed the duties of cleaning and cooking expected of her as a wife in her era, but also worked as her husband’s “round-the-clock editor, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Celebrating Singlehood and Reclaiming the Word ‘Spinster’
An interview with Kate Bolick about the single women in history who helped her understand how she could live on her own terms.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Kitchen Rhythm: A Year in a Parisian Pâtisserie
An Oxford grad learns to navigate boiling sugar, sleep deprivation, and exacting pastry chefs with whom she can barely communicate.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams, with Benjamin Hedin | Radio Silence | March 2014 | 11 minutes (2,690 words) Radio SilenceFor this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we are thrilled to share a first-time-ever memoir by the great Lucinda Williams from Radio Silence, a San Francisco-based magazine of literature and rock & roll. Subscribe, and download the free iOS […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
Jazz's Influence on the Beat Generation
These principal writers in various ways all tried to capture something of the flavor of jazz. Certainly Ginsberg and Kerouac. Kerouac wanted to write lines of prose or poetry that captured something of, say, the saxophonist art. He was interested in extemporization; he was interested in improvisation. And when he heard figures like Lester Young, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Teenage Girls Still Love Sylvia Plath
Thirty years after her suicide, Sylvia Plath continues to seduce the adolescent psyche. But her fans are just as likely to romanticize her death as they are her poetry: Twenty-first-century teens’ belief that they’ve found a kindred outsider in Plath is evident in the thousands of Internet sites and Web logs that now celebrate the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Karma Bum
What It’s Like To Be 9 Years Old and Playing Video Games with Allen Ginsberg: The following night, after Ginsberg’s poetry reading (why would I want to go to that?) a group of students eager for him to impart morsels of omniscience were forced to wait outside my room while we played video games on […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Tears See More Than My Eyes: My Son’s Depression and the Power of Art
Alan Shapiro published two books in January 2012: Broadway Baby, a novel, from Algonquin Books, and Night of the Republic, poetry, from Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt. This essay first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review (subscribe here). Our thanks to Shapiro for allowing us to reprint it here, and for sharing an update on Nat’s life.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women
This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many […]
