In this week’s Top 5 we have lessons from apartheid, clever Claude, feeling bodies anew, the power of wax, and free mining.
The Georgia Review
Posted inEditor's Pick
Phantom Pains
“These losses—my limb, my students’ hopes, Thoreau’s mammals, the wings falling from our skies—they are not all that distinct from one another. They can’t be, because all of us, all of the material world, we are one and the same thing.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Kate Mossman, Luke Winkie, Lou Stoppard, Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne, and Rosa Lyster.
Posted inEditor's Pick
St. John the Wondermaker
“Since April, on the past five fourth Wednesdays of the month I have driven to St. John the Wondermaker Orthodox Church, in Atlanta’s Grant Park neighborhood, to wash and trim and file the feet of a handful of the city’s 2,200 unhoused men.”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending notable stories by Kori Suzuki, D. Watkins, Mike Scalise, Emily Polk, and Vassi Chamberlain.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Polaroid Death Machine
“I reached for the same tools that my grandmother used, the old Polaroid cameras I’d taken from what was once her home, which I cleaned and cared for, then carried out into our new, time-broken world, panicked and unsure of what I’d see.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Essay as Realm
The space of the essay does have edges, but the edges are a little bit ragged and open.
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Paul Kix, Matthieu Aikins, Matt Alt, Elisa Gabbert, and Sophie Elmhirst.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Star Essay
“…a writer strives to constellate, to make sense of seemingly disparate and unrelated notes or events.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Against Winning
“What I am qualified to say—what I am saying: what links the evils of the modern Olympics to literary criticism, to literary prizes and to A-to-F classroom grades—is that I’m tired of losing and tired of winning, and that we all lose when we focus so often on prizes, grades, and final scores.”