Longreads

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Cory Doctorow

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:09:38 -0400

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Cory Doctorow:

Q: What animal or nonhuman being do you most identify with?

A: An ecosystem.

In our latest Longreads Questionnaire, tech critic and author Cory Doctorow (@mostlysignssomeportents) shares his thoughts on multitasking (including thinking while swimming); writing in hammocks; and blogging for the long haul.

Visit Longreads to read more from Cory Doctorow.

The People Who Know Too Much: A Reading List on Amateur...

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:06:12 -0400

The People Who Know Too Much: A Reading List on Amateur Experts

“To care intensely about one narrow subject is to reject the idea that value must be broad, immediate, or easily monetized. So while fixation can seem bizarre, it is also to resist the thinning of attention that modern life demands.”

In our latest reading list, Dr. Dinesh Kumar Jangra celebrates those who nurture an obsession. Find out more here.

The Cousin Returns

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:35:50 -0400

The Cousin Returns:

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Joseph Trinidad’s new essay collection, Lucky Creatures, published by @sarabandebooks. In “The Cousin Returns,” Trinidad, a Filipino writer based in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington, recounts a visit home to the Philippines:

The last time I was in Cabuyao, there weren’t townhouses, private swimming pools, or major shopping malls in the area. It was long stretches of grassland. There wasn’t the fluorescent glow of fast-food chains every three minutes. There weren’t as many potholes. In the name of progress, much of the town, like everywhere in its vicinity, is dragged through time.
A blip, a turn, and suddenly, I’m in a present I no longer recognize. Exhausted, my mind retreats toward sleep.
I can never truly return.

Visit Longreads to read “The Cousin Returns.”

Photo credit: Dennis Eir Lim

The Top 5 Longreads of the WeekIn this week’s Top 5:*...

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:49:27 -0400

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week’s Top 5:

* Quiet, please (The New Yorker)
* An ode to art (The New York Review of Books)
* The value of vultures (The Washington Post)
* The Big Ea(t)sy (Oxford American)
* A marginal conversation (The Yale Review)

Learn why our editors are recommending these stories.

‘It's More Like a Playlist’: Lavinia Spalding on Editing the Best Women's Travel Writing

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:45:21 -0400

‘It's More Like a Playlist’: Lavinia Spalding on Editing the Best Women's Travel Writing:

Author Lavinia Spalding has edited The Best Women’s Travel Writing series seven times, so she’s learned a thing or two about strong travel narratives and writing about place.

“I see how stories suffer when a writer attempts to fit the play-by-play of an entire experience into a few thousand words,” she says. “I remind myself that it’s almost always more effective to focus on just one illuminating slice of an experience and bring that to life on the page, excavating it for the inner story and zooming in close, so I can move beyond shallow observations.

Spalding takes us behind the scenes of volume 13, published this week by Travelers’ Tales. She considered more than 1,600 submissions for this edition and ultimately curated 27 stories—a collection of essays written by best-selling authors Susan Orlean and Roxane Gay, as well as emerging writers who have never been published.

Visit Longreads to read our conversation with Lavinia Spalding on curation, grief and levity, and the travel stories she hopes to read more of in the future.

Friction: A Reading List on Why Inconvenience Can Be...

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:46:39 -0400

Friction: A Reading List on Why Inconvenience Can Be Meaningful

We prize convenience and efficiency, almost to a fault. Sometimes, though, we’re missing out on surprise, serendipity, and anticipation when we avoid friction. Courtney E. Martin brings us five reads that examine the pros and cons of life’s little hurdles.

Without getting too nostalgic about it, these readings will make you revisit the forgotten, sometimes wonderful feelings that go with friction. We don’t have to throw away our cell phones to bring spontaneity back into our lives. We can be intentional and collective. In fact, we must be intentional and collective; it’s the only way to live expansive lives connected by slow and messy delight. And that is an aim far more worthy of our finite time than productivity, no matter what the false gods of Silicon Valley and late-stage capitalism say.

This week’s Longreads Top 5: Reign makers, Harper’s...

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:00:52 -0400

This week’s Longreads Top 5:

Reign makers, Harper’s Magazine
Board brothers, The New York Times
Filling blanks, The American Scholar
War games, The New York Review
Field dreams, @fastcompany

Visit Longreads to read why our editors recommend these stories.

The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler's Daughters

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:42:53 -0400

The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler's Daughters:

The new @atavist issue, by investigative journalist Barry Meier, is stranger than fiction.

The McCanns vanished, as did Sally and Steve. It wasn’t that hard; they were living in the golden age of fugitives. Passports were easy to counterfeit, hotels and airlines took cash, and there weren’t cell phones or personal computers that authorities could track.

Read an excerpt on Longreads.

The Grate Cheese Robbery One chancer, who was stopped at the...

Thu, 28 May 2026 12:44:07 -0400

The Grate Cheese Robbery

One chancer, who was stopped at the Russian border near Kaliningrad, was found to be carrying 1000 lbs of imported cheese. He valiantly claimed personal use, but the authorities didn’t buy it. Another, traveling from Finland, had stuffed 67 wheels of cheese into the side compartments of his Volkswagen.

Why are criminals stealing cheese? How much cheese are they melting away? Read Olivia Potts’ new fabulous and fun piece on cheese heists to find out!

Getting Unstuck with Ramona AusubelWriting well is hard! Today...

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:53:02 -0400

Getting Unstuck with Ramona Ausubel

Writing well is hard! Today at Longreads, we’ve got an excerpt of episode 528 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, in which host Brendan O'Meara talks with author Ramona Ausubel about getting unstuck in your writing projects, developing your voice, and embracing friction.

Students constantly ask, so what do you do about writer’s block? You keep writing, you find a specific and small entry point and you continue on. There is no moment when that stops happening to you. For the most part, most of us have to say, okay, I’m in this dark place, it’s all foggy, I can’t see anything. What do I have? I have a sense of who this character is. I have a sense of the space of the world, and there’s like, 100 flashlights hanging on the wall. Why? I don’t know. Let’s see what we can do with all of those things. It’s just that next little step, and the next little step opens it up a little bit further, and you might get to another stuck place that’s different than the one before. But again, you’re going to look at what you have and keep moving forward. There’s 101 ways of creating that one small step forward, so that it doesn’t feel like a giant impossible task. But it’s a continuous act of discovery, which is not only not a problem, but a good thing. It’s the fun part. So not knowing also means that you get to discover so much more. You just have to keep asking again: Where am I? What am I interested in? What would be the next most fun thing, and what do I have in front of me that I can work with?

Read the excerpt. Check out the full episode.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week In this week’s Longreads...

Fri, 22 May 2026 12:26:10 -0400

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week’s Longreads Top 5:

—After the flood (Texas Monthly)

—Twisted roles (The San Francisco Chronicle)

—Drawn to the emptiness (The Offing)

—When the rice fails (The New Yorker )

—Many, many miles (Texas Highways)

Find out why our editors want you to read these stories here.

‘Nothing Together’

Thu, 21 May 2026 12:45:30 -0400

‘Nothing Together’:

The latest in @atavist’s Revived series—which breathes new life into stories lost to dead links and shuttered publications—is “A Hollywood Ending” by Maccabee Montandon.

I wrote this story, which was originally published by Gawker in 2013, as a sort of exorcism to contend with personal demons. I’ve never been great at therapy, so I looked at reporting and writing “A Hollywood Ending” as my version of it. I wanted to get everything out, as it were. There were other considerations, too: I was motivated to make sense of a senseless act of violence for the people who had counseled me after my brother’s death. And I wanted the story to speak to people I’d never met. We hear about the shootings that grab headlines, but what about those that don’t? I wanted to bring to life just one of the thousands of anonymous people killed by guns in this country every year.

Read our excerpt, “Nothing Together,” on Longreads.

"Aren't the Organs a Silver Lining?"

Tue, 19 May 2026 16:44:28 -0400

"Aren't the Organs a Silver Lining?":

In OPIOIDS & ORGANS, a new graphic memoir published @drawnandquarterly, Arizona O’Neill writes about her father’s death and the organ industry’s own codependence on the opioid crisis.

Read our excerpt—“Aren’t the Organs a Silver Lining?”—on Longreads.

Failure To LawnCan you hear the sound of millions of lawn mowers...

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:01:20 -0400

Failure To Lawn

Can you hear the sound of millions of lawn mowers firing up in the northern hemisphere as spring gets into full swing and the grass starts to grow? We spend an inordinate amount of time tending our lawns, squandering precious water and spreading chemicals to achieve turfgrass perfection. Maggie Slepian learned that it doesn’t have to be that way.

That night, with no one to talk to about the moral and environmental failings of turfgrass, I typed I hate my lawn into my phone and was funneled straight to r/NoLawns on Reddit. Turns out, a lot of people also hate their lawns.
In the cobwebs of my mind, I must have known native landscaping and regenerative yard meadows existed, but I’d been so overwhelmed by my solo landscaping failures that I didn’t consider alternatives. I scrolled photos of pebble-lined xeriscaping, natural water features, glistening berry bushes, and before-and-afters of ragged grass transformed into a riot of flowers sagging with pollen-covered bee butts. Photos were accompanied by trails of comments and replies praising the grass removal and offering advice and commentary on the range of plants and explosion of life.
Oh, I thought, gazing into the hypnotic glow of my phone. I can just kill my lawn. On purpose.

Be sure to check out the full piece.

‘This Was Our Life’: A Reading List on Multigenerational...

Tue, 12 May 2026 14:07:38 -0400

‘This Was Our Life’: A Reading List on Multigenerational Caregiving

Are you a part of the sandwich generation, someone who cares for children in addition to aging relatives, friends, or neighbors? Courtney E. Martin makes her Longreads debut with an incisive new reading list. She brings us five stories that highlight the overwhelming and rewarding work of giving care to other human beings.

Sixty-three million Americans are family caregivers, but many of us don’t identify this way. Perhaps it’s because the role creeps up on us. Perhaps it’s because we feel we’re not worthy of the label; caregivers should be saints, or at the very least, people with well-organized spreadsheets. Perhaps it’s because caring for someone, officially, requires them to acknowledge that they need care—a tricky prospect for the strongest and most stubborn among us.

Check out the full list.

The Top 5 Longreads of the WeekIn this week’s Top 5:*...

Fri, 08 May 2026 09:51:47 -0400

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this week’s Top 5:

* Happy birthday, Sir David (The Ringer)
* The search for her son (The Boston Globe Magazine)
* A keyboard fantasy (The New York Review of Books)
* A membership to midlife (Taste Cooking)
* The kids will slay (The New Yorker)

Learn why our editors are recommending these stories.

Open Season

Thu, 07 May 2026 11:59:23 -0400

Open Season:

The new @atavist story is about an undercover agent who posed as a taxidermist to bust Colorado’s worst poachers.

As the Colorado Division of Wildlife saw it, by the mid-1980s the San Luis Valley had become a lawless backcountry where hunters traded poached wildlife for goods and services, to pay off gambling debts, or to obtain cocaine and marijuana.

Visit Longreads to read our excerpt, “Open Season."

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week: May 1, 2026

Fri, 01 May 2026 12:21:23 -0400

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week: May 1, 2026:

This week’s Longreads Top 5:

- Bottles ashore, @newyorker
- Benches awaiting, Places Journal
- Boundlessness disputed, Quanta Magazine
- Books aplenty, Cabinet
- Batons bought, The Baffler

Visit Longreads to why our editors recommended these stories.

Finding the Magic in Writing with Lidia YuknavitchToday at...

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:55:05 -0400

Finding the Magic in Writing with Lidia Yuknavitch

Today at Longreads, we’ve got some writing inspiration for you from Lidia Yuknavitch. She’s the author of several best-selling books, including the novels The Small Backs of Children, The Book of Joan, and Thrust, as well as a memoir, Reading the Waves. She recently sat down with Brendan O'Meara for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast to talk about shitty first, second, and third drafts; embracing the struggle to write; and more. Check out this short snippet of their conversation below and be sure to read the excerpt. Don’t forget to tune in to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast on your favorite streaming app.

Brendan: I think that, early on, writers can struggle with writing a lot of bad stuff before they can get the good stuff. What’s been your practice for writing a lot of bad stuff and then knowing that, with enough practice, it gets better?

Lidia: I got rid of the binary value system of good and bad, and that helped. I moved toward a different model: There are only other versions, and by going through many versions, as in the natural world, in life and in space, something solid rises to the surface that you can curate and arrange.

Welcome to the weekend! In this week’s edition of our Top...

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:01:40 -0400

Welcome to the weekend! In this week’s edition of our Top 5:

—Death traps | The Believer
—Derring-do detectives | The New York Review of Books
—Drivel inspection | The Drift
—Deforestation? Not in my back yard! | In These Times
—Dissonance appreciation | The New Yorker

Find out why our editors loved these stories here.