‘It’s More Like a Playlist’: Lavinia Spalding on Editing the Best Women’s Travel Writing
The editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing series on curation, grief and levity, and the stories she hopes to read more of in the future.
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Longreads features
Living in an Alive World
Soft eyes, deep listening, and other ways to extend human perception beyond our limits.
The Grate Cheese Robbery
How organized crime fell in love with cheese.
Getting Unstuck with Ramona Ausubel
On finding joy in the writing process, embracing friction, and developing your voice.
‘Aren’t the Organs a Silver Lining?’
Complicating a “mixed blessing” of the opioid crisis: a rise in organ donations.
Failure To Lawn
On what a dying patch of turfgrass can teach us about water scarcity, ecological repair, and the lies we tell ourselves about success.
The Secret Door
“When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe.”
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Weekly Top 5
The Top Five Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Sloane Crosley; Zadie Smith; Mark Johnson and Saumya Khandelwal; Todd Kliman; and Sheila Liming.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending notable stories by Wyatt Williams, John Leland, Jonathan Weiner, Suzy Hansen, and Max Ufberg.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Aaron Parsley, Matthias Gafni, Zoe Kurland, Julian Lucas, and James Wade.
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Learn to Love Your Search Results Again.
Introducing the Longreads Story Recommender.
The Longreads questionnaire
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.
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.
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.
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Excerpts from The Atavist Magazine, our sister publication
The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler’s Daughters
“When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime.”
‘Nothing Together’
My brother’s murder and its aftermath.
Open Season
Colorado’s San Luis Valley was a wildlife poacher’s paradise.
Then an undercover federal agent arrived.
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Longreads reading lists
Friction: A Reading List on Why Inconvenience Can Be Meaningful
Five stories that explore the risks and rewards of life’s little hurdles.
‘This Was Our Life’: A Reading List on Multigenerational Caregiving
Five stories on the overwhelming, profound art of caring for other people.
Holding Pattern: A Reading List on Waiting . . .
Everyone waits. No one is spared the waiting room, one way or another. Seven stories on an essential human condition.
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