The author of We Survived the Night and co-director of Sugarcane responds to our 25 questions on writing, reading, and creativity.
Writing
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Rebecca Solnit
The author of The Beginning Comes After the End talks about jackrabbits, her own “informational hypervigilance,” and the one word she won’t stop using.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Sojourn into the Stephen King Archive: ‘The Dark Half’
“Typescript drafts on view in the newly opened archive reframe the horror maestro’s relationship with his alter ego, Richard Bachman.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tom Junod Finally Reckons with What It Means to Be a Man
“In a long list of classic stories, the legendary magazine writer helped teach readers what masculinity looks like in the 21st century. To write his first book, he had to confront the man who first taught him: his father.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?
“If only they were robotic! Instead, chatbots have developed a distinctive—and grating—voice.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘I Awoke at ½ Past 7’
“Our cursed age of self-monitoring and optimisation didn’t start with big tech: as so often, the Victorians are to blame.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem
“Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Autocrat of English Usage
“Henry W. Fowler believed he knew how sentences should read—and his judgments have shaped The New Yorker’s style for a century.”
Posted inFeature
The Eloquent Vindicator in the Electric Room
No one remembers the assassination of Congressman James M. Hinds. What do we risk by making it just another part of American history?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Arundhati Roy on How to Survive in a “Culture of Fear”
“Those of us who’ve been very unsafe as children, we seek out the unsafe. We seek out the lack of security, and if you have security, you blow it up.”