Krista Diamond | Longreads | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,342 words) In 2012, I was working at a hotel in Glacier National Park when a man I’d just met invited me for a day of tubing and drinking beer on the river. Little did I know, I would nearly drown in the rapids. But […]
death
Posted inCulture
The Death Artist
Her medium: the cremains of departed loved ones. Her mission: to change your perspective on the end of life.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Mushrooms That Ate Luke Perry
“When actor Luke Perry died in 2019, he was buried in a compostable mushroom suit. The only problem: it didn’t work.”
Posted inCuration, Nonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend longreads by Benjamin Wofford, Josh Dzieza, Evan Osnos, Alice Wong & Ed Yong, and Dan Kois.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What the Racist Massacre in Buffalo Stole From One Family
An intimate portrait of the family of Celestine Chaney in the days after she and nine other Black people were shot and killed by a white supremacist at Tops Friendly Market. Chaney had just one child, a son named Wayne: Wayne was dissatisfied by the answers the country offered. The stagnation of gun control efforts […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Pandemic Tragedy in Guayaquil
In this harrowing read for The New Yorker, Daniel Alarcón paints a grim picture of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, which endured one of the world’s most lethal outbreaks of COVID-19. In Guayaquil, on any given day before the pandemic, there might have been thirty to fifty people whose deaths had to be accounted for, whose […]
Posted inQuotes
What Death Means to Love and What Love Means to Death
“But perhaps it’s neither here nor there how we think about death. Perhaps the work that must be done is in how we think about life.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Under the Wheel
“I have always been drawn to stories about people who try to escape — escape their neighborhoods, their families, their histories — and who instead become what they were running from.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘My Sincere Condolences’
Inside the struggles and heartaches of FEMA’s massive COVID funeral assistance program.
Posted inEditor's Pick
“I Feel Like a Survivor”: Inside the Funeral Industry’s 2021 National Convention
“After a busy year, morticians let loose at their annual gathering in Nashville.”