Listen to the Sound of My Voice By Seyward Darby Highlight How a journalist found her voice as her mother lost hers.
Good Naked vs. Bad Naked By Krista Stevens Highlight “As marriages go, ours is an infant. Soft-skulled and milk-breathed. We’ve been married for two years, together for five.”
Life Goals: Power Couple Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird By Krista Stevens Highlight “When two people are on the same page, and they love each other, and they’re working towards something better, you can do a lot of good things.”
Loving Molly, and Mourning Her: A Husband’s Extraordinary Essay By Seyward Darby Highlight Blake Butler writes movingly about his late wife, poet Molly Brodak.
The Secrets of a Hidden Diary By Seyward Darby Highlight A hidden diary, a love story, and a mystery.
What’s Love Got to Do With It? By Alice Driver Feature “Although the world has made space for more diverse women, we are still expected to fill the role of the one who wants to be loved, to be a mother when perhaps we only ever wanted to paint, to write, to explore the world alone, on our own terms.”
The Lie of ‘One Last Time’ with My Ex By Ella Dawson Feature Ella Dawson learns about the perils of break-up sex the hard way.
Swipe Right: A Reading List about Online Dating By Jacqueline Alnes Reading List Jacqueline Alnes shares her own dating app experiences and nine stories about the pitfalls of finding a partner online.
The Migrant in the Mirror By Morgan Jerkins Feature In recent novels, Ocean Vuong and Nicole Dennis-Benn tell stories in which young queer characters affected by migration and displacement are worthy of seeing themselves reflected in others.
Who Do You Belong To? By Emily Lackey Feature When she dipped her heart into someone else’s relationship, Emily Lackey discovered how to define love on her own terms.
Learning About Love from Strangers By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight There are the marks lovers leave on trees and rocks, and the marks lovers leave on each other.
Edible Complex By Jen Doll Feature Never eat pot chocolate on a third date, and other lessons about love.
Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Here’s a List of Longreads about Love for You By Jacqueline Alnes Reading List Jacqueline Alnes brings us eight stories on love in its many-splendored guises.
You’re Just Too Good to Be True By Kavita Das Feature My on-again, off-again love affair with Engelbert Humperdinck.
Lean On By Longreads Feature A declaration of dependence, excerpted from Briallen Hopper’s new essay collection.
Bruce Springsteen: Sadness, Love, Madness, and Soul By Krista Stevens Highlight “All you needed to do,” Springsteen says, “was to risk being your true self.” We ignore our demons at our peril.
Insomnia: To Pursue Sleep So Hard You Become Invigorated By the Chase By Longreads Feature Insomnia is not just a state of sleeplessness, a matter of negatives. It involves the active pursuit of sleep. It is a state of longing.
She Kept Every Letter By Krista Stevens Highlight “It is so essential to morale that army and navy officers of the highest rank list mail almost on a level with munitions and food.”
The Boy Who Wasn’t My Boyfriend By Allie Zenwirth Feature Allie Zenwirth falls in love within the confines of an all-male Chasidic school.
How American Women’s Pro Baseball Kept Lesbians in the Closet By Krista Stevens Highlight “Play like a man, look like a lady.” At Narratively, Britni de la Cretaz looks at the history of lesbianism in early pro women’s baseball and at the beautiful love stories that the movie “A League of Their Own” chose to ignore.
Captive Audience By Longreads Feature When you live alongside anything for a long time — any person, any character, any narrative structure, any screen flicker — you become a part of it and it becomes a part of you.
Gabrielle Bellot on Reclaiming Her Womanhood By Krista Stevens Highlight In this intimate and moving essay, Gabrielle Bellot decides she needs to stop allowing others to define her.
“Hey, Can I Sleep In Your Room?”: Studying Love with Elizabeth Flock By Jonny Auping Feature Elizabeth Flock on the years she spent studying other people’s marriages in Mumbai.
Cataloguing the Detritus of Relationships Past By Sari Botton Highlight Essayist Leslie Jamison visits Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships.
The Uncanny Valley of Online Dating By Danielle Tcholakian Highlight Dating after a Big Love ends never feels quite right. What do big loves leave us with, and what do they take?
Language Acquisition By Diana Spechler Feature Diana Spechler recalls fleeing her life in New York City for a new one with a painter in his village in central Mexico.
Not Really A Distant Aunt: My Family’s Slave By Krista Stevens Highlight “Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow.”
A Love Affair with a Prince Soundtrack By Danielle Jackson Highlight Veteran music journalist Michael Gonzales reflects on a long love affair and Prince’s deep, varied catalogue of hits.
Money, Beauty, Security: Online Dating in the Philippines By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight New technology and information access in the Philippines is shifting the online-dating power dynamic from Western men to Filipina women.
Alexander Chee: ‘He thought I wanted monogamy more than him, and I didn’t.’ By Krista Stevens Highlight Alexander Chee didn’t realize that his boyfriend, M., was pretending to be someone content to be monogamous.
