“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Writing
Posted inEditor's Pick
ISpyForGood
“On any given day I was seen as both valuable and disposable, sometimes oscillating between these in the same hour.”
Posted inFeature
The Secret Door
“When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Up In Smoke
“I woke up one day to the realization that I had written ten good pages of a book that was due in five months.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Vauhini Vara
The author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age and The Immortal King Rao on memorable meals and books about whales.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt
“Historians and nonfiction authors often glide over lived experience. They prefer actions, citations, details, dates. But I had just gone through something primal—something beyond my control and beyond the boundaries of modern life.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Ibram X. Kendi
The Stamped and How to Be an Antiracist author on the superpower he’d like to have, the outlets he likes to read, and his latest work, Chain of Ideas.
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Patrick Radden Keefe
The New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book London Falling on running, writing in the morning, a life-changing childhood trip, and more.