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Kevin Smokler is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Practical Classics: Rereading Your Favorite Books from High School (Prometheus Books, 2013) and curator of Deep Interviews here on Longreads.  *** Here on Longreads, I’m curating Deep Interviews (#deepinterviews)—lengthy interviews with interesting people—a format I’ve grown to love. It’s not quite original reporting but certainly […]

Evan Kindley is the managing editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. ••• Ariel Levy, “Basta Bunga Bunga” (June 6, 2011) – The New Yorker A great piece about what proved to be the Last Days of Berlusconi’s Italy, with all the virtues of the typical artfully triangulated New Yorker profile (as recently codified by […]

Peter Smith has written about food and science for GOOD, Wired, and Gastronomica. He’s based in Maine, and, in 2011, he covered pickle juice, patented sandwiches, and the last sardine cannery in North America. This is his first attempt at Top Five Longreads.     *** Here are my (somewhat arbitrarily selected) #longreads that, er, explore unexpected, […]

Molly Lambert is a writer covering pop culture at Grantland. (She’s also featured in our Top 10 Longreads of 2011) *** These are some Longreads I enjoyed this year: • “The Bell Jar At 40”: Emily Gould on Sylvia Plath (Poetry Foundation) • “The J in J. Crew”: Molly Young on Jenna Lyons (New York magazine) • […]

Brian Wolly is an associate web editor at Smithsonian Magazine. ••• 1. Tom Bissell’s Breakdown of L.A. Noire on Grantland When ESPN and Bill Simmons’ Grantland debuted in early June, the knives were out and its initial reaction was mixed at best. Like many, I approached the new project with simultaneous skepticism and optimism, but it […]

Kevin Purdy is a freelance writer, and a frequent Longreader. Check out his site here. Not all written in 2011, but brought to my attention and saved in 2011: In Which There’s a Girl in New York City Who Calls Herself the Human Trampoline – This Recording Graceland is truly the one album I never […]

Ben Cohen writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal. In 2011, he also published a Kindle Single and wrote for Grantland, The Classical, Tablet, The Awl and Yahoo! Sports. You can follow him on Twitter at @bzcohen. *** I don’t know that I can pinpoint exactly what it was about these stories that compelled […]

Ross Andersen is freelancer living in Washington, D.C. He has recently written about technology for The Atlantic, and is now working on an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He can also be found on Twitter at @andersen. *** “The Mother of Possibility,” by Sven Birkerts, Lapham’s Quarterly Procrastination being my favorite vice […]