Douglas Williams is currently a doctoral student in political science at the University of Alabama, where his research centers around public policy and politics as it relates to disadvantaged communities and the labor movement. You can find him on Twitter at @DougWilliams85, at a collaborative blog on Southern progressivism called The South Lawn, as well as at The […]
GQ
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Brief History of Epic Parties: Reading List
The following reading list comes courtesy Michelle Legro, editor at Lapham’s Quarterly. * * * No doubt you are on your way to one right now: an epic party, a night to end all nights. But will your epic party be as legendary as those thrown attended by Truman Capote, Cher Horowitz, Jay Gatsby, Jordan […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Stories that Magazine Editors Are Afraid Of
“It’s probably worth saying that there are editors at all sorts of magazines (myself included) who know they should never assign a story on a certain kind of subject—a Phish tour, say, or Mitt Romney, or what’s up with Cuba?—and yet they do so despite their better judgment. A writer tells you he or she […]
Posted inGuest Pick, Nonfiction
Sasha Belenky on Jeanne Marie Laskas's 'The People V. Football'
Sasha Belenky is a senior editor at The Huffington Post. Whether it’s negotiating murder-for-hire with a fake hit man or visiting old stomping grounds with the vice president of the United States, if you’re in the car with Jeanne Marie Laskas, you’re pretty much guaranteed that the story will be good. I’ve found myself most […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience
Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here. “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published […]
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Longreads Guest Pick: Margaret Ely on 'Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi'
Margaret Ely is a web producer and reporter for The Washington Post. Maybe I was hungry and saw the word “sushi” in the headline, but I was hooked the moment I started reading Adam Johnson’s bizarre, outlandish story about a Japanese chef who served North Korea’s supreme, “dear leader” Kim Jong-il. While it’s known that […]
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Our Longreads Member Pick: My Body Stopped Speaking to Me, by Andrew Corsello
For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995. Corsello explains: I was circling the drain in the spring of 1995—convalescent, out of […]
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The life and last days of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed during a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya: It’s curious that a kid from California who grew up knowing nothing about the Arab world would come to devote his career to the Middle East and North Africa—as opposed to, […]
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The writer recalls her past life, without family and hitching rides at truck stops—and a time in which she may have crossed paths with a serial killer: I had a vision of Lisa Pennal as a truck-stop Kali roaming the back lots in her denim skirt and fuzzy slippers with an ozone hole for a […]
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[Not single-page] An oral history of the TV show “Cheers”: Danson: I’ll tell you about the worst day of my life. Shelley and Rhea were carrying that week’s episode, and the guys were just, ‘Let’s play hooky.’ We’d never done anything wrong before. John had a boat, so we met at Marina del Rey at […]