essays Archives - Longreads

A Longreads Collection of Catapult Stories

by Longreads February 14, 2023February 28, 2024

A reading list of essays we loved from Catapult magazine.

Fighting the Tree

by Peter Rubin January 4, 2023January 4, 2023

“Maybe I wasn’t the son Dad wanted. Maybe, if he could have, he would have picked another kid, a son he could enjoy parenting.”

Nonfiction

Best of 2022: Reported Essays

by Longreads December 13, 2022December 8, 2022

Our list of some of the great reported essays published this year includes reads on grief, veganism, the geology of Mexico City, and British real estate.

A white house perches on a craggy island, surrounded by water.

Nonfiction

The Substance of Silence: A Reading List About Hermits

by Chris Wheatley September 8, 2022February 27, 2024

Humans are social creatures, and loneliness can be debilitating — yet, many have discovered solace in the solitary life.

The Mushrooms That Ate Luke Perry

by Peter Rubin September 6, 2022October 19, 2022

As good as the headline is, the piece is even better — an essay about the actor’s afterlife plans that doubles as an elegy for privacy, nostalgia, and everything else we carry with us through this world. His heart, inside his chest, inside the mushroom burial shroud, was pressed against the silty soil left behind by […]

My Friend Goo

by Peter Rubin March 31, 2022October 19, 2022

When the pandemic upended her daily life, Deb Olin Unferth started walking, and one day met a goose. A measured, tender tale of loss and love and difficult friendship — one that warns you throughout that a sting is coming, but manages to sneak up and wallop you anyway. He was feisty, the town bully, […]