Below, six syllabi from journalism professors on what you should be reading. * * * 1. Journalism 494: Pollner Seminar In Narrative Non-Fiction With Esquire’s Chris Jones (University of Montana) “The purpose of this course is to teach students how to write publishable magazine-length narrative non-fiction: In other words, my aim is to help you […]
Tag: longreads
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Yanan Wang’s sympathetic story about undocumented students at Yale University begins with a strong image of a little boy, alone: ‘The first time he arrived in the United States, three-year-old Juan Cerda ’15 was on a […]
This week we’re excited to share “My Family Tree, in Black and White,” a new personal essay by Dionne Ford and More magazine. The below story comes from the magazine’s September issue, which is not yet online. Thanks to Ford and More for sharing it with the Longreads Member community! Read an excerpt here. Become a Longreads […]
Janet Fitch | White Oleander, Little, Brown and Company | 1999 | 19 minutes (4,640 words) Our latest first chapter comes from Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, who has chosen Janet Fitch’s 1999 novel White Oleander. If you want to recommend a First Chapter, let us know and we’ll feature you and your pick: hello@longreads.com.
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: One of the hardest rules of writing for students to follow is: “Don’t start a story with a quote.” Except… Except when the quote is so incredible that it makes the reader do a hard-stop. To […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. I’m tired of middle-aged white dudes critiquing my generation as selfish and narcissistic. Often, the selfie is held up triumphantly as the very symbol of our self-degradation. Here, four other, more intelligent perspectives on selfie culture: 1. “A […]
Girl reporter for Politics in Minnesota. Mother of Dragons. It was a great week for longreads in America (see: Reuters’ ‘The Child Exchange’ investigation and Rolling Stone’s interactive story on hackers who will probably save the world), but one piece was passed around on my social media feeds more than any other: ‘Finding Molly: Drugs, […]
Joel F. Harrington | The Faithful Executioner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | March 2013 | 15 minutes (3,723 words) Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Student publications have always served as simulators for journalists in training. Your college paper is where you learn to write, to edit, and to challenge authority. You fall in love there, both with journalism and at […]
The best interviews with authors make you want to read—not just their work, but read in general, and read all the time, and read with a new fervor. * * * 1. “The Art of Not Belonging: Dwyer Murphy Interviews Edwidge Danticat.” (Guernica, September 2013) Danticat gives a beautiful interview, discussing her book Claire of […]
Christine Kim is a civil rights advocate studying at Duke University School of Law. My favorite longread of the week is ‘What’s Killing Poor White Women,’ by Monica Potts, in The American Prospect. Health care is on the national stage. From Obamacare to health care costs to new state-run health exchanges, it seems that each […]
This week’s Longreads Member Pick comes recommended by Longreads contributor Julia Wick: It’s “The Last Freeway,” a story by Hillel Aron, published in Slake in 2011, about the construction of a freeway interchange and a judge whose decisions shaped its scope. Aron explains: “Well, my friends Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa had this great quarterly […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Journalism requires a relentless focus on the now and the next. But in order for journalists to give their audience any sort of context, they must always have a sense of the past. It’s not enough […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things,” wrote Henry Miller. Travel changes the traveler, obviously. Here, authors look at themselves, their societies, and their conceptions of home. 1. “Fat and […]
Jane R. LeBlanc is a freelance journalist who writes for the Dallas Observer where she covers the local comedy scene and anything strange and interesting. She has written for Denton Live, Mayborn magazine, Spirit magazine and the Denton Record-Chronicle. She has a humor blog, Everyone Hates You, where she pontificates about everyday life. You can find her online. Inspired […]
For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from Next City’s Forefront magazine, by journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz. Aronowitz looks at the story behind the minimum wage increase in San Jose, which jumped to $10 per hour from $8 per hour after the city’s residents voted for the increase last November—”the […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Stories about people outside the margins of convention can have a “Check out these weirdos!” leitmotif. We write about these people because they are different. But a clumsy writer accentuates the differences instead of finding the […]
Above: Mark Felt Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC. With Chelsea Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison and Edward Snowden’s future still uncertain, it seems a pertinent time to look at what becomes of our whistleblowers after […]
Rose George | Metropolitan Books | August 2013 | 17 minutes (4,213 words) The following is the opening chapter of Rose George’s new book, Ninety Percent of Everything. Our thanks to the author for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Friday. No sensible sailor goes to sea on the day of the Crucifixion or […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The following four pieces resist cliches about social media and its impact. These authors do not shame nor condone; they do not preach. They take a deeper look at the tendency and luxury to share our lives with […]
Nolan is an editorial fellow at The Atlantic. Jada Yuan’s profile of Mindy Kaling for New York magazine is almost a year old, but it has been a major influence on the way I write. It moves effortlessly from funny to sad, and it captures Kaling so well that it’s hard not read her quotes […]
This week’s Member Pick is from a brand new publication, The New New South, which has just published a new ebook by Belle Boggs, who’s been featured on Longreads in the past for pieces including 2012’s “The Art of Waiting.” Her latest, “For the Public Good,” looks at forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States and the […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Americans spend a lot of time with sports, so “healing power of sports” stories that elevate games beyond, well, games, have an undeniable appeal. But sports writing, when trying to transcend its subject matter, can run […]
From Matt Graves: Here are six of his story picks on the topic of music producers, the often-overlooked architects of the music we hear and love. * * * 1. “The Song Machine: the Hitmakers Behind Rihanna,” by John Seabrook (The New Yorker, March 2012) In her ascent to the pop throne, Rihanna had some unlikely help: a […]
As the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington approaches next week (August 28), Longreads has teamed up with Al Jazeera America’s “America Tonight”to collect the best civil rights stories. We want your help: Share your favorite stories below in the comments, and we’ll spotlight some of your picks next week. They can be historical […]
Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. This week’s theme is sex work and sex workers. Such a complex subject is best explored through a variety of forms—essay, investigation, photo essay and interview. 1. “When the Fight Against Slut-Shaming Overlooks Victim-Blaming.” (Sometimes Magical, June 2013) The […]
Win Bassett is a writer, lawyer, and seminarian at Yale. My treasured longread of the week is Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “The Poorest Rich Kids in the World” in Rolling Stone. I lived down the road from Duke University for ten years, but one doesn’t need any familiarity with the Blue Devils to become enthralled with […]
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