After a childhood filled with intrusive medical interventions for misaligned eyes, Liane Kupferberg Carter wrestles with learning to see herself and others clearly.
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Shelved: Jeff Buckley’s Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
The posthumous Buckley industry began with this problematic album, proof that the people who control a musician’s estate don’t always have his music in mind.
Longreads Best of 2019: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Our top picks of the year, all in one place.
‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’
Mark Haber discusses “Reinhardt’s Garden” and its protagonist’s quest for a true understanding of melancholy: “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either…”
How to Run a Magazine in the Desert
Ken Layne designs, edits, and distributes his independent magazine Desert Oracle from tiny Joshua Tree, California.
On Solitude (and Isolation and Loneliness [and Brackets])
Sarah Fay reflects on four years spent in solitude (and isolation [and loneliness]), viewing it through the lens of punctuation.
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo
Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
The Need for Distance: Jaclyn Gilbert on Writing and Running
For author Jaclyn Gilbert, revising her writing is much like doing the same running loops over and over, to the point where she doesn’t have to think about where she’s going anymore.
Free Solo
On the return of ‘Veronica Mars’ and the power of the solitary woman.
Hellhound on the Money Trail
Standard recording contracts screwed Bluesmen out of royalties in the early 1900s, and the system was no different when Columbia released “Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990.”

