Our Picks
Fidel Castro Is Dead. What Will Cuban-Americans Like Me Do Now?
After Castro's long reign, three tales of exile and identity examine the complicated relation of American-born Cubans to their families' homeland.
Author:
Source: Narratively
Published: Nov. 28, 2016
Length: 21 minutes (5399 words)
How Spanish Immersion School Made All the Difference for One Family
A family spends 10 weeks in Mexico and Argentina trying to learn Spanish.
Author:
Source: Los Angeles Magazine
Published: Nov. 4, 2016
Length: 9 minutes (2354 words)
Pregnant in Panama
To celebrate the release of the 2016 edition of Best American Travel Writing, here's one of the essays reprinted in the anthology. In it, writer Freda Moon visits her father in Panama on the cusp of having her first child. People kept telling her "having children will change everything," but her traveling parents taught her that parenting does not spell the end of exploration and adventure.
Author:
Source: AFAR
Published: Oct. 14, 2015
Length: 12 minutes (3234 words)
Christine Who Fed the Hungry
An elegy for a much beloved volunteer chef and leader of the rest of the volunteers at a soup kitchen in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Author:
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov. 24, 2016
Length: 10 minutes (2601 words)
Potential Conflicts Around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President
How the president-elect is already mixing personal business with leading the United States.
Author:
Source: The New York Times
Published: Nov. 28, 2016
Length: 27 minutes (6977 words)
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.
Author:
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.
Author:
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.
Author:
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.
Author:
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.
Author:
Source: New York Magazine
Published: Nov. 18, 2016
Length: 15 minutes (3801 words)