” I prefer to keep my darlings on ice.”
writers
From Identity to Inspiration: A Reading List on Why We Run
Six thoughtful reads on why writers run.
Voices of Rebirth: A Reading List on Being Indigenous in America
Our lives are so much more than you could possibly imagine.
Odd, Genius, or Something In Between: A Reading List on Writers
“Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat.”
The Great Fiction of AI
Can artificial intelligence write novels? Josh Dzieza looks at how independent authors have begun to experiment with AI writing programs like Sudowrite and Jasper to write their stories faster. The piece explores questions around ethics and authorship, and its design is A+. It requires a strange degree of sympathy with the machine, thinking about the […]
Very Online
CJR fellow Karen Maniraho talks with five very online journalists — Ryan Broderick, Jason Parham, Taylor Lorenz, Rebecca Jennings, and Rusty Foster — about what it’s like to cover tech and internet culture today, how they navigate through viral moments and algorithms, and how they look for meaning in a constantly noise-polluted, chaotic space. Because […]
Joan Didion’s Magic Trick
Caitlin Flanagan goes on a road trip through California — including Sacramento, Berkeley, and Malibu — visiting the homes of the late Joan Didion and exploring why her writing has had such a powerful effect on people. Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album created a new vocabulary of essay writing, one whose influence is […]
‘The Ways of Fiction Are Devious Indeed’
Sands Hall, a playwright and daughter of author Oakley Hall, digs into the work of Wallace Stegner — specifically his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angle of Repose, which is based on the life of Mary Hallock Foote. “[W]e often fold in the real with the invented,” writes Hall, but when does inspiration become plagiarism? Yet in […]
Calling All Writers: Pitch Us Your Essays
Do you have an idea for a Longreads essay? Now is the time to share it.