Longreads Best of 2020: Music Writing By Krista Stevens Feature Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.
How Travel Writing May Look After the Pandemic By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Although people will always travel and write about their experiences, it remains unclear how the travel writing form will look after Covid-19.
Let’s Not Talk About Estrangement By Krista Stevens Highlight “I’ve always had the sense that my mother’s side of the family is, in fact, diminished by my uncle’s absence. Or at least diminished in their quiet response to it.”
On Dolly Parton and Being Seen By Krista Stevens Highlight “Perhaps I’m taking this too personally, but the idea of being inexplicably drawn to a phenomenon that is ultimately destructive is, well, heartbreaking and uncomfortably relatable.”
Longreads Best of 2019: Science and Nature By Longreads Commentary We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year. Here is the best in science and nature.
The Link Between Hurricane Katrina, Emmett Till, Racism, and Climate Change By Krista Stevens Commentary “I wondered if Katrina was really a 14-year old boy named Emmett.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Brent Cunningham, CJ Hauser, Carla Bruce-Eddings, Caroline Rothstein, and Lisa Grossman.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Jonah Engel Bromwich, Ryan Goldberg, Meghan Daum, Alison Osius, and Joel Mowdy.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Jayson Greene, Theresa Breuer, Christa Parravani, Alexandra Kimball, and Casey Taylor.
‘Writers tell’: The Devastating Contrasts in Life, Death, and West Virginia By Krista Stevens Highlight “Twelve years later, I birthed my son on my sister’s death day.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Irin Carmon, Joe Bernstein, Robert Sanchez, Amanda Feinman, and Lois Beckett.
“This Is the Glittering Fringe”: On Drag Inclusivity at the Rosemont By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘“The drag here is messy, not vanilla,’ one regular tells me over the din. He sips his drink and settles on a word. ‘Genuine.'”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Angella d’Avignon, Katie Englehart, Caitlin Dewey, Eric Benson, Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom.
‘What Happened to You While You Were Gone?’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “There is beauty to be found in mining hidden histories, but also, in letting them rest.”
There Are Few Second Chances for Immigrants Who Commit Crimes By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight How America punishes immigrant criminals multiple times for the same crime and continues traumatizing them.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Ben Blum, Reeves Wiedeman, Mizuho Aoki, Amy Wright, and Sarah Scoles.
Dorothy Allison on how Shame Defines Class By Krista Stevens Highlight “What seemed to me life-saving was that I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t put a candy-coated gloss on anything.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Rahima Nasa, Roxane Gay, Jessica Camille Aguirre, Lucy Grove-Jones, and Jen Doll.
Bolivian President Evo Morales Is Banking on the Country’s Untapped Resource: Coca Leaf By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Instead of eradicating its coca crop, Bolivia is trying to market coca in a variety of products. Will anyone outside of Bolivia buy them?
The St. Louis Suburbs Bear the Cost of America’s Nuclear Past By Danielle Jackson Highlight After toxic waste from the Manhattan Project was illegally dumped in 1974, rare illnesses have effected the local population.
Nina Simone’s Three Years of Freedom By Danielle Jackson Highlight At Guernica, Katherina Grace Thomas turns a lens on the years Nina Simone spent in Liberia in the mid-1970s.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week By Longreads Weekly Top 5 This week, we’re sharing stories from Katherina Grace Thomas, James Lasdun, Kyle Chayka, Tay Wiles, and Buzz Bissinger.
An Ode to Black Families: A Reading List By Danielle Jackson Reading List This narrative of the black family in America always been inadequate. It has never told the full story of what I know about black love.
When Alzheimer’s Disease Relieves Us of the Pain in Our Past By Krista Stevens Highlight For Maria Browning’s mother, Alzheimer’s Disease has dimmed old torments.
How Ayana Mathis Came to Own Her Ambition By Sari Botton Highlight After a phone call from Oprah, the author looks at the long line of women in her life who taught her about achieving her dreams.
The Face of Mass Deportation By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At Guernica, journalist J. Malcolm Garcia profiles forty-eight-year-old Sixto Paz, a roofer with a family and no criminal record who moved into a church to avoid deportation.
A Fat Body and a Fat Mind: On Taking Up Space, Unapologetically By Michelle Weber Highlight Carmen Maria Machado’s stunning essay in Guernica on the power of women who take up space is an important read for people of any size.
Biological Clocks and Biological Gender: Trans Women and the Dream of Pregnancy By Michelle Weber Highlight Belle Boggs writes in Guernica, exploring what the possibility of uterine transplants — no matter how remote or unaccessible the science is — means for trans women.
This Is Rape By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight T Kira Madden tells the story of her rape, confusion, and redemption to show us what rape culture really looks like in this country.
On Beauty: A Reading List About Makeup By Em Perper Reading List Beauty criticism analyzes the ways we can subvert a society that would have us subsumed by self-loathing. We use the tools we’ve been given. Makeup, then, can be a weapon. And it can be damn fun.
