Our Picks
New Neighbors
In our continued mission to bring attention to America's print literary magazines, here is a powerful essay from the University of Florida's journal Subtropics, about the way homophobia and transphobia ran one couple out of their new apartment, and into disarray. Unfortunately, this story is as timely as ever.
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Source: Subtropics
Published: June 29, 2016
Length: 30 minutes (7604 words)
Billionaires vs. the Press in the Era of Trump
A look at how deep pockets and expensive libel suits allow billionaires like Donald Trump and Peter Theil to hamper and threaten the free press in the United States.
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Source: New York Times
Published: Nov. 22, 2016
Length: 11 minutes (2957 words)
A Reading List for Thanksgiving
None of the following stories were written in 2016, but the themes of our contemporary American Thanksgiving traditions—family, identity, history—remain relevant.
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Source: Longreads
Published: Nov. 23, 2016
White Nationalists See Trump as Their Troll in Chief. Is He With Them?
An examination of the racist extremist movements capitalizing on Trump's victory.
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Source: Mother Jones
Published: Nov. 23, 2016
Length: 24 minutes (6204 words)
Truth, Lies, and Videotape
When writer Kelly Luce spends a week in a women's detention center in Japan for a crime she didn’t commit, she learns about the difference between perception and reality, and what justice and punishment mean in a country known for honor and low crime.
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Source: New York Magazine
Published: Nov. 18, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3801 words)
Write the Book That Scares You Shitless: An Interview with Colson Whitehead
LitHub executive editor John Freeman’s interview with author Colson Whitehead, who this week won the National Book Award for The Underground Railroad. The two discuss the genesis of the book, the ridiculous notion that we entered a “post-racial” world after Barack Obama was elected, and the lingering relevance and effects of slavery.
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Source: Literary Hub
Published: Nov. 23, 2016
Length: 34 minutes (8565 words)
"It Smelled Like Death": An Oral History of the Double Dare Obstacle Course
An entertaining behind-the-scenes look at how the obstacle course in a popular Nickelodeon game show was put together.
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Source: The AV Club
Published: Nov. 21, 2016
Length: 32 minutes (8155 words)
The Search for My Father’s Killer
An excerpt of Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor’s forthcoming memoir, Let Me Still Be Singing When Evening Comes. Taylor learns some hard truths about her father as she searches for clues about his murder in St. Louis, in 1973.
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Source: The Daily Beast
Published: Nov. 20, 2016
Length: 26 minutes (6547 words)
Connie Converse's Time Has Come
In the 1950s, polymath Connie Converse recorded songs in her apartment that the American public met with silence. Then she disappeared.
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Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov. 21, 2016
Length: 6 minutes (1747 words)
Thank You, Jon Gnagy: An Appreciation of a Predecessor to Bob Ross
Ned Stuckey-French reflects on the host of "Learn to Draw," the “middlebrow” instructional art show he loved as a kid.
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Source: Longreads
Published: Nov. 22, 2016
Length: 8 minutes (2204 words)