Best of 2011

Sady Doyle is a writer and the proprietor of Tiger Beatdown.  *** There is no slogan more misunderstood, or more widely abused, than “the personal is political.” This phrase was one of the most transformative ideas to emerge from second-wave feminism, or from the 20th century. It’s the underpinning assumption of all my own work. […]

Logan Sachon writes for The Awl and other places also. She lives in Virginia.   *** • “Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library,” by Maria Bustillos (The Awl) This piece just blew me away, and I’m not even a DFW devotee (I’ve yet to tackle any of his books). To go to his library, to transcribe notes […]

Geoff Van Dyke is deputy editor of 5280 Magazine in Denver. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, and Men’s Journal. *** • “The Food at our Feet,” by Jane Kramer, The New Yorker Kramer can almost make you smell and taste the stuff she’s picking: mint, asparagus, fennel, mushrooms. Plus, maybe my favorite lead […]

Jessica Lussenhop is a staff writer for the Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages. See her stories on her Longreads page or find her on Twitter.  *** The ones I couldn’t stop thinking about. *** • Jon Ronson , “Robots Say the Damndest Things,” GQ, March 2011 Besides the fact that Ronson is such a consistently fascinating writer, […]

Bethlehem Shoals is an editor at The Classical and the founder of FreeDarko.com. *** • “Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas,” Zach Baron, The Daily  Hunter S. Thompson has a tendency to overshadow his subject matter, as if he invented the entire world in his own image, and this were a tenet of non-fiction. The dirty little […]

Jenna Wortham is a technology reporter at The New York Times. In her spare time she makes zines and stalks former America’s Next Top Model contestants in Brooklyn. She can be found on Twitter and Tumblr. *** SO many of my favorites have already been called out—Mindy Kaling’s “Flick Chicks,” Dan P. Lee’s “Travis the Menace” and […]

Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the forthcoming The Queen of the Night. (See more on his Longreads page.) *** My Top Fiction Longreads for 2011: • Mary Gaitskill’s “The Other Place”, The New Yorker, Feb. 11, 2011: Beautiful, seemingly casual, smart and terrifying, it is the story of a man worried […]

Doree Shafrir is an editor at Rolling Stone, where she hangs out with the Misfits on a regular basis. She can also be found at doree.tumblr.com. *** When I went back into my Kindle and my Twitter and Tumblr and email and all the other places where I noted or saved especially noteworthy stories from […]

Lev Grossman writes about books and technology for Time magazine. He’s also the author of the bestselling novels The Magicians and The Magician King.  *** • “One Man’s Quest to Outrace Wind,” by Adam Fisher, Wired Why do I never find stories like this? Probably because I’m not working as hard as Adam Fisher. Apparently there’s […]

Maria Bustillos is a journalist who writes frequently for The Awl. *** The power of Allison Benedikt’s “Life After Zionist Summer Camp” (The Awl) derives from the purity of its point of view, which is that of one person’s lived experience, minutely and honestly detailed. Benedikt swings gracefully between humor and searing candor in this […]