“I joke that this is the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.”
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Longreads Best of 2019: Investigative Reporting
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in investigative reporting.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Sandra Sidi, Lena Solow, Aubrey Hirsch, Noelle Mateer, and Amanda Hess.
‘I Inherited Luck’: Bridgett M. Davis on Her Family’s Life in the Numbers
In a new memoir, novelist Bridgett M. Davis reveals that her mother was a Numbers operator in Detroit from the 1960s through the 1980s.
This Week in Books: An Everlasting Meal
The book that’s been the most help to me during lockdown is a book I’ve never read.
We’ve All Been Unreliable Witnesses to Lorena
“I’ll put myself through the jokes and everything as long as I can shine a light on domestic violence and sexual assault and marital rape.”
Living to Create: Talking Music and Writing With Drummer Emily Rose Epstein
Musician Emily Rose Epstein talks about her dual life as a rock drummer and writer.
Sam Lipsyte on ‘Mental Archery,’ the Quest for Certainty, and Where All the Money Went
“It’s difficult to say what you really think. You’re too aware of the traps, the dead ends, the cul-de-sacs of utterance: all the ways we let cliché steer us in a certain direction, force us to say not quite what we mean…”
The Precarity of Everything: On Millennial (Blacks and) Blues
Reniqua Allen — the author of It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America — on Black millennials, millennial burnout, and hope in a time of uncertainty.
‘Every Woman Writer Feels Like She’s Starting Over Without Any Guides’
Ann Leckie talks about “The Raven Tower,” the erasure of women writers from the canon, the privilege inherent to ‘the anxiety of influence,’ and the power of tradition.

