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Sarah Smarsh

Posted inReading List

Longreads Best of 2018: Profiles

by Longreads December 18, 2018January 25, 2023

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in profiles.

Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes, Unapologetic Women

When a Missing Nickel Makes All the Difference

by Krista Stevens October 25, 2018October 19, 2022

“Yet money was a lie—pieces of paper and metal suggesting prices for goods, services, labor, and human beings themselves in a way that often had more to do with profit than with true value.”

Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story

An Interview with Sarah Smarsh, Author of ‘Heartland’

by shiqic September 18, 2018October 19, 2022

The author of “Heartland,” a National Book Award longlisted memoir about growing up poor in rural America, gives her views on politics, identity, and cultural appropriation.

Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

by Longreads September 18, 2018October 19, 2022

“There’s an idea that laborers end up in their role because it’s all they’re suited for. What put us there, though, was birth, family history — not lack of talent for something else.”

Posted inNonfiction, Story

Behind The Writing: On Interviewing

by Sarah Menkedick July 20, 2018October 19, 2022

In her first column on craft, Sarah Menkedick speaks with Sarah Smarsh, Lauren Markham, and Jennifer Percy on the art of the interview.

Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes

Plasma For Sale (Used) — $20 a Pop

by Krista Stevens September 6, 2017October 19, 2022

Sarah Smarsh’s brother has sold his plasma for the last decade to make ends meet under mounting credit card debt and student loans.

Posted inEditor's Pick

Blood Brother

by Krista Stevens September 5, 2017October 19, 2022

Sarah Smarsh writes about how rich drug companies buy plasma from the poor and working poor — literally feeding their wealth with one of the few renewable resources the poor have to sell — their blood.

young women holding signs at a donald trump rally
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

Who’s to Blame for Trump? Media’s Socioeconomic Blind Spots

by michelleweber October 13, 2016October 19, 2022

It wasn’t poor whites who criminalized blackness by way of marijuana laws and the “war on drugs.” Nor was it poor whites who conjured the specter of the black “welfare queen.” These points should not minimize the horrors of racism at the lowest economic rungs of society, but remind us that those horrors reside at […]

Posted inNonfiction, Story

The Case for More Female Cops

by Longreads July 26, 2016October 19, 2022

Nearly nine out of ten cops are men. Sarah Smarsh discusses the police force’s gender problem and a Wichita woman’s efforts inside the criminal justice system that failed her.

Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews

Interview: ‘Poor Teeth’ Writer Sarah Smarsh on Class and Journalism

by juliawick November 7, 2014October 19, 2022

“There often is a ‘tone’ in writing about the poor. There is a presumption that people of a certain class are mired in misery.”

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