“Invite writers and readers in—magic will follow.” Six years ago, I published my first essay as an editor for Longreads. Margot Harris’s “Under the Knife” opens with a scene of cupcakes shaped like private parts (and goes on to discuss the guilt of having cosmetic surgery as a feminist). What a privilege, I thought at […]
Introducing The Longreads Questionnaire, featuring Vauhini Vara.
“I felt like a rat trapped in a maze with no finish, running into walls and getting electrocuted at every turn. I wanted out of the hellscape I’d created, but I had formed a whole identity around the latticework of visible bones and tendons; my days were structured around the denial of food. To give […]
“I’m not just crying, I’m truly wailing. I’m one of Homer’s grieving women, I’m Alice in Wonderland crying an actual ocean between hiccups, I’m Diane Keaton weeping then whooping in her Something’s Gotta Give breakup montage. My team, the Lakers, has lost.” I confess: I did not know much about basketball until I worked with Rachel Dlugatch […]
People in the West are responding to modern life by reviving ancient pagan spiritual practices.
“Some animals don’t flee when the mixer comes. They hold their ground. Wait for the trouble to pass. But nothing in their evolution has prepared them for an eight-foot-wide drum covered in corkscrewing blades coming straight towards their soft bodies where they hunker in their meadow homes.” Let’s get this weekend started, shall we? We’ve […]
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
London’s Highgate Cemetery shows us just how hard it is to keep the dead buried.
“Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat.”
Every story that appeared in the number one slot in our Weekly Top 5, all in one place.
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