Rules can ruin the kind of exciting language that makes literature rewarding, but some rules also enhance writing. It’s challenging to find the middle ground.
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Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
Posted inReading List
Stranger Things: A Reading List of Unsolved Mysteries
Tales of odd phenomena stoke our imagination even as they tease us.
Posted inStory
Japan: A Longform Reading List of Longform Writing
Armchair travel is more important than ever, now that pandemic has forced us to stay indoors. Reading can take you across the ocean.
Posted inReading List
Digital Havoc: A Reading List About Hacking
Behind the 1s and 0s, hackers are still people—and their motivations are more nuanced than you might think.
Posted inFeature
David Lynch Was Here
A dispatch from the real Twin Peaks, where fans of the director flocked after his death.
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend stories by Michael Wilson, Joseph Bien-Kahn, Jason Anthony, AC Shelton, and Tom Breihan.
Posted inStory
Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas
Pocahontas may seem like a strange vehicle for discussing our gay villains. But Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tressie McMillan Cottom on Writing in One’s Own Voice
“And yet, for academics this is a constant tension. They have this idea that the writing should be secondary, or distinct, from the thinking. And I’ve always found that very bizarre. How are you thinking, if you are not writing?”
