The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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A profile of a teen icon, after graduation. “‘She likes to argue and so do I,’ says [Kenneth] Lonergan, ‘and she’s really smart and so am I, so you end up having these discussions about interesting and broad-ranging topics. But then I find it very charming that she’ll go from mentioning a talk she gave in Australia at 16 to complaining about ‘Why does my dad care if I go to bed late?’ Or how annoying it is that her best friend is in Costa Rica and she can’t text her.'”

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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–Mat Honan, in Wired, on Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield, whose newest startup, Slack, is taking off.
Photo: kk, Flickr

— In the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal profiles James Freeman, the CEO of Blue Bottle, an Oakland and Brooklyn-based specialty coffee roaster that is trying to mass-produce coffee drinks that even coffee snobs would buy. Writes Madrigal after sipping a Blue Bottle iced coffee drink from a carton: “This coffee was the real deal.”
Photo: Voxfx
A profile of Dr. Willie Parker, who tends to the needs of women at the one abortion clinic open in Mississippi. Last week a federal appeals panel voted to block a Mississippi law that would have shut down the clinic.

A reading list could never do author Roxane Gay justice. For one thing, she’s incredibly prolific. She writes, edits, teaches and tweets. Within the past few months, she’s garnered acclaim for her intense novel, An Untamed State, and her collection of essays, Bad Feminist. These are just the facts.
I don’t remember discovering Gay’s work. I remember requesting to follow her on Twitter and the elation I felt after receiving her approval. I remember reading her stark personal essays for The Rumpus. I remember reading one my favorite stories of hers out loud to an ex while he listened obligingly. He didn’t love it, but I did. I had never read anything like it in my life. I was obsessed. Her commentary on current events, her appreciation of pop culture, her honesty and nuance—she’s Good, with a capital G.
If you haven’t had the privilege of reading Gay before, let this be a primer. She has written dozens and dozens of essays and short stories, many of which she lists on her website. I’ve included two wonderful recent interviews, a smattering of short stories and more. Longreads recently featured an excerpt from Gay’s novel, An Untamed State. If that doesn’t hook you, nothing will.
“‘I’ve always been interested in how people deal with loss,’ he says.” A profile of an obituary writer.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
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“Nichols steeled herself for the work that lay ahead, reminding herself, as she had so many times before, You wanted this job.” A profile of Sergeant Brenda Nichols, a former head of the Dallas Police Department’s Child Abuse Squad. The story goes deep on one of the hundreds of child abuse cases Nichols has investigated.

Brendan I. Koerner | The Skies Belong to Us | 2013 | 25 minutes (6,186 words)
When the FAA’s antihijacking task force first convened in February 1969, its ten members knew they faced a daunting challenge—not only because of the severity of the crisis, but also due to the airlines’ intransigence. Having spent vast sums on Beltway lobbyists, the airlines had the political clout to nix any security measure that might inconvenience their customers. So whatever solutions the FAA proposed would have to be imperceptible to the vast majority of travelers. Read more…
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