This Month In Books: The Book Is an Escape Tool By Dana Snitzky Commentary Sometimes telling a story is the only way to escape it.
‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’ By Adam Morgan Feature 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…”
‘I Was Trapped Forever In This Present Tense’: Carmen Maria Machado on Surviving Abuse By Hope Reese Feature “She was always afraid of my voice. That was the defining factor of our relationship — fear of what I would say and write and do. She’s afraid of … the narrative that I possess.”
Carrying Histories of Protest By Longreads Feature Jaquira Díaz witnesses her father’s rebellious fight for a better life, and her homeland’s fight for its place in the world.
The Corpse Rider By Colin Dickey Feature “I could see the ghosts,” recalled Lafcadio Hearn about his early childhood. Late in life, he became a celebrated chronicler of Japan’s folk tales: stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
A Green New Jail By Will Meyer Feature What does environmental justice look like in a landscape overrun by prisons? Where the incarcerated suffer from unusually polluted surroundings, and prisons are a toxin in their own right?
‘I Was Being Used in Slivers and Slices’: On Feminism at Odds With Evangelical Faith By Jane Ratcliffe Feature “I wasn’t unified in my being. I wasn’t able to bring my whole self to the table,” says Cameron Dezen Hammon about her life as a worship leader for an evangelical megachurch.
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
Surviving the Shattering of My Mind and My Marriage By Longreads Feature Andrea J. Buchanan contemplates the way illness and pain can freeze a sufferer in time, as if encased in glass.
This Month In Books: ‘One Degree Is About the Uncanny’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is suspended in a state of anticipation.
‘Writing This Book Was a Weird Séance ’: An Interview With Deborah Levy By Tobias Carroll Feature “If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
‘I Went Quiet…and That Allowed Me To Understand’: The Life of a Molecatcher By Tobias Carroll Feature Marc Hamer discusses life, death, and the lost art of catching a mole.
When the Dishes Are Done, I Wonder About Progress By Sarah Rose Haas Feature In “Coventry,” Rachel Cusk draws a connection between politeness and narrative death, rudeness and tragedy, storytelling and war.
It’s Time To Talk About Solar Geoengineering By Longreads Feature We need to start talking about seemingly drastic approaches to the climate crisis, such as sun-dimming aerosols, right now — or we risk losing democratic control of the process.
A Single Sentence By Longreads Feature In an clandestinely written memoir, a jailed Turkish novelist and political dissident remembers the single sentence that changed everything at the moment of his arrest.
“We’re All Still Cooking…Still Raw at the Core”: An Interview with Jacqueline Woodson By Adam Morgan Feature “When I look at that dress and how much intention went into the making of it…it’s like we want to have something that can’t be destroyed, because so much of the past has been destroyed…”
Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
Climate Messaging: A Case for Negativity By Rebecca McCarthy Feature Nell Zink, Joy Williams, and a different kind of climate skepticism.
Regarding the Interpretation of Others By Patrick Nathan Feature When attempting to write a review of the official Susan Sontag biography, our reviewer finds himself on shaky ground after learning new information about the author.
This Month in Books: ‘I Don’t Want To Become a Giant Insect!’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is a bodily affair.
Communiqué from an Exurban Satellite Clinic of a Cancer Pavilion Named after a Financier By Longreads Feature Anne Boyer encounters a familiar system — that grand and easy-to-mistake-for-everything system — at the cancer pavilion.
‘To Be Polite By Ignoring the Obvious’: Jess Row on Unpacking Whiteness in Literature By Morgan Jerkins Feature “I was looking for texts that seem to go the extra mile in hiding something — texts that almost seem to be begging to be interpreted in terms of what’s not being said.”
My Love Affair with Chairs By Longreads Feature Chairs the world over have loved me, and I love them all back.
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo By Emma Jacobs Feature Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
The Migrant in the Mirror By Morgan Jerkins Feature In recent novels, Ocean Vuong and Nicole Dennis-Benn tell stories in which young queer characters affected by migration and displacement are worthy of seeing themselves reflected in others.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance By Longreads Feature In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
In the Age of the Psychonauts By Longreads Feature Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland” By Ryan Chapman Feature ‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
‘Victims Become This Object of Fascination… This Silent Symbol.’ By Jonny Auping Feature Rachel Monroe talks about the pitfalls of the true crime genre. “I had this feeling like I can see the whole thing and nobody else understands… That’s a real trap that we as reporters can fall in.”
