Searching for the Mountaintop in Upstate New York By Benje Williams Feature A family confronts its racial past along the Appalachian Trail.
Calling All Writers: Pitch Us Your Essays By Longreads Commentary Do you have an idea for a Longreads essay? Now is the time to share it.
Out There I Have to Smile By Heather Lanier Feature Heather Lanier explores the pressure to perform happiness.
“Addiction is a thief of your goodbyes” By Krista Stevens Highlight “I got angry, my mother cried, the addicts got high. That became a holiday theme for years to come.”
The Geography Closest In By Longreads Feature In her new book, Miranda Ward explores the unique place of almost-motherhood — an uncertain landscape characterized by waiting, wanting, hoping, and not-knowing.
‘Almost Home’: On Place, Legacy, Growing Up in Atlanta, and Symbols of White Supremacy By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight An essay on growing up in the South, legacy, and a place rooted in white supremacy.
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.
‘My Tongue Swallowing the Taste of Home Soil’: On Filipino Food, Family, and Identity By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight “Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.”
‘These Were His Mountains, After All’: Remembering One’s Father While Cycling in the Swiss Alps By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight James Jung thought he rode the winding narrow roads of the Alps to memorialize his dad. He was wrong.
“Do You Get Shit for Your Name?” By Osama Shehzad Feature When your name is Osama and you’re living in post-9/11 America, you always know The Question is coming.
‘I Mostly Feel Like My Voice Matters’: A Portland Journalist on Protests, Police Violence, and Enduring Trauma By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight A reporter covering the protests in Portland reflects on fear and trauma, police violence, and her voice as a journalist.
Phone Call in The Age of Coronavirus By Max Feature Marcia Aldrich on why cell phones, so thin and light and little, don’t seem fitting for momentous calls, for life and death communications, or for last words.
With Your Support, We Can Continue to Be a Space for First-Person Storytelling By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Commentary Personal narratives are powerful. Help us support writers and artists who have these stories to tell.
A Survey of My Right Arm By Longreads Feature Why couldn’t this ailing appendage get over itself? Diagnosing a mysterious malady.
Sharing Our Stories Was Supposed to Dispel Our Shame By Sari Botton Highlight Emily Gould reconsiders the likelihood of women’s first-person writing bringing about change.
House of the Century By Daisy Alioto Feature Daisy Alioto reconsiders the nature of architecture while researching window alarms.
Whatever Happened to ______ ? By Longreads Feature Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.
Searching Sephora for an Antidote to Aging — and Grief By Abby Mims Feature Five years after her mother’s death, while still grieving and suddenly middle-aged, Abby Mims turns to beauty products to cure what ails her.
The Price of Dominionist Theology By Eve Ettinger Feature After leaving fundamentalism, Eve Ettinger grapples with the loaded theological heritage of evangelical personal finance teachings.
Elizabeth Wurtzel Made it Okay to Write ‘Ouch’ By Sari Botton Highlight Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.
What I Did for (Strange) Love By Laura Bond Feature As a teen, Laura Bond went all out to meet Depeche Mode — and to hang onto her best friend.
If My Scars Could Talk By Tega Oghenechovwen Feature Tega Oghenechovwen contemplates the ways in which acute childhood trauma can infect and compromise relationships later in life.
Jersey Girl By Longreads Feature Too Japanese for Americans and too American for the Japanese, one New Jersey native traces the influence of racism on her parents’ careers and her own life.
A Beloved Art Critic Sings His Swan Song By Sari Botton Highlight “Drink was destroying my life. Tobacco only shortens it, with the best parts over anyway.”
Borrowed Babies By Jill Christman Feature Five months into her first pregnancy, one writer pursues a research project about the history of home economics, as she struggles with her own concerns about motherhood.
Stumbling Into Joy By Kate Hopper Feature The electric bass chose her, but it took 44 years to heed the call.
California Burning By Tessa Love Feature A year after the Camp Fire, Tessa Love contemplates home, California’s undoing, and what it means to belong.
Records on Bone By Longreads Feature One young Ukrainian-American struggles to piece together a clear portrait of her parents’ difficult Soviet past, once they quit erasing, and began embracing, their legacy.
I’m 72. So What? By Catherine Texier Feature Catherine Texier pushes back against society’s dated ideas about older women, claiming her place among those who are determined to remain vibrant and relevant in the last decades of their lives.
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