Jillian Lauren on the challenges of holding nothing back as a writer—about her time in a harem, her life as a sex worker, and the fallout from her family’s response to her memoirs.
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Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Making More Magazines: A Reading List
Last year, Longreads published a list with behind-the-scenes stories about magazines. Last week, Anne Helen Petersen published an article about the state of Tiger Beat for BuzzFeed News. Inspired, I decided to create an addendum to Making the Magazine.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
STAT: My Daughter’s MS Diagnosis and the Question My Doctors Couldn’t Answer
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis? And if so, why is the medical establishment ignoring published academic research that started in the 1950s proving it?
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Reading List for My 25-Year-Old Self
This list is a birthday gift to me and, I hope, of use to you, too.
Posted inReading List
Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism
Story picks by Leslie Jamison, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Tom Scocca, Ann Friedman, Rachel Syme, Francesca Mari, Sari Botton, and Emily Perper.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Bad News: Censorship, Fear & Genocide Memorials
“They are manufacturing fear,” Moses said, gasping. “We survivors have asked them to stop this violence. What do they want from us?”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Pursuit of Writing and the Problem of Entitlement
Entitlement operates at a more basic and often unconscious level. It’s a kind of defensive snobbery, a delusion that the world and its constituent parts—whether a product or a piece of art or a loved one—exist to please you. This is why I often find it disheartening to eavesdrop on people at the annual Association […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Work of Inspiration: Five Pieces about Poetry
How do you write? My best friend might look at her old poems and draw from those. My former newspaper advisor tweeted at me: “Nulla dies sine linea,” or “Never a day without a line.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Perils of Writing About Your Own Family: A Conversation with George Hodgman
“Memoir is a total minefield, as you know. It’s best if you write the book and leave the country.”
