Our inherited biases about who should write what live deeper than most of us realize or want to acknowledge.
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The Name Change Dilemma
Hannah Howard considers tradition, identity, and love as she navigates the decision whether to keep her name after her wedding.
Wonderful Things: The Kid Creole and the Coconuts Story
Combining island sounds with stylish clothes and an unforgettable stage presence, one of New York City’s most original bands helped influence 1980s pop culture, and they never sacrificed their unclassifiable artistic vision.
Sight and Insight
After a childhood filled with intrusive medical interventions for misaligned eyes, Liane Kupferberg Carter wrestles with learning to see herself and others clearly.
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.
How Ken Layne Created a Publishing Oasis in a Desert Town of 8,000 People
If you’re dedicated and have an original vision, you can make things happen, even way out among the cactus. Anyway, the rattlesnakes are nicer than some of the people in New York media.
Longreads Best of 2019: All of Our No. 1 Story Picks
Our top picks of the year, all in one place.
Help Us Fund More Original Essays (and Great Art to Go with Them)
Member contributions help us to amplify diverse voices and give chances to new writers.
‘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…”
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.

