A highly personal list, alphabetical by author. Click here for previous lists.
The Weight of Words
Issac Bailey, The Assembly
How one college found the balance between free speech and lifting up underheard voices.
The Dirt on Pig-Pen
Elif Batuman, Astra
A Peanuts character and the national zeitgeist.
The Romance Scammer on my Sofa
Carlos Barragán, The Atavist
The author convinced his mother that her Tinder suitor was a fake. Then he flew to Lagos to try to track the man down.
The Dungeons and Dragon Players of Death Row
Keri Blakinger, The New York Times Magazine
For a group of men in a Texas prison, the fantasy game became a lifeline — to their imaginations, and to one another.
San Francisco’s 24-Hour Diner Stops the Cosmic Clock
Chris Colin, Alta Journal
“Outside those doors, San Francisco teeters, democracy teeters, the ice caps teeter…Here there’s no room for nonsense. You order your food, you eat your food.”
The Kids on the Night Shift
Hannah Dreier, The New York Times Magazine
Thirteen-year-old immigrants are working perilous jobs at U.S. poultry plants.
An Alabama Kidnapping That’s Stranger Than Fiction
Charles Gaines, Garden & Gun
An entire abduction recorded by a snoring app.
A football player, a killing and the elusive search for justice
David Hale, ESPN
The morally context tale of a catfishing and its aftermath.
The Lurker
Erika Hayasaki, The Verge
It didn’t matter if she knew you — if you were a professor and Asian American, you were a potential target
We Are All Animals at Night
Lana Hall, Hazlitt
A journalist and former sex worker on what it means to work the night shift.
Lonnie and Me
Mitchell S. Jackson, The New York Times Magazine
Decades after he stopped selling drugs, the author sought out his supplier.
Bitter rivals. Beloved friends. Survivors.
Sally Jenkins, The Washington Post
After 50 years, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova understand each other like no one else can. When cancer came, they knew where to turn.
The Case for Hanging Out
Dan Kois, Slate
“We’re all losing the ability to engage in what I view as the pinnacle of human interaction: sitting around with friends and talking shit.”
Saving a Life
Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books
A surreal, true story about a life-and-death emergency 30,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
A Test of the News
Wesley Lowery, Columbia Journalism Review
A powerful critique of journalism today, and a way forward.
Beaten to a Pulp
Jon Mooellam, The New York Times Magazine
During one Italian Carnival celebration, “oranges sprayed through the air omnidirectionally like sawdust, like sparks.”
The Best Little Magazine in Texas
Karen Olsson, The Baffler
A tribute to the Texas Observer.
Across Tampa Bay, families cram into motels to avoid life on the street
Lauren Peace, Tampa Bay Times
A visit to the Palm Harbor Inn, where $1,300 to share a room is all some working families can afford.
Want to Understand LGBTQ Life in America? Go to Alabama
Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
For decades, queer Americans “have built our own systems of mutual aid and care. In Alabama, that spirit and the people who carry it refuse to give in to the backlash.”
Human_Fallback
Laura Preston, n+1
The author, with her new MFA, takes a job as the human assistant to an AI chatbot.
In the Cities of Killing
David Remnick, The New Yorker
The Hamas massacre, the assaults on Gaza, and what comes after.
When Your Own Book Gets Caught Up in the Censorship Wars
Robert Samuels, The New Yorker
The author was invited to speak at a Memphis high school, but students could not read his Pulitzer-winning book on George Floyd.
A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis
Eli Saslow, The New York Times
After four decades, a couple finds their business surrounded by a homeless encampment.
Family Values
Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker
Jeanne Manford had a “lifelong sense of being utterly average,” but changed American culture when she founded PFLAG to support her gay son.
The Ones We Sent Away
Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic
Whole generations of adults were lost to institutionalization. This is an attempt to un-erase one of them.
The Maestro
Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post
A two-part series about the biggest tennis match-fixing ring in history. (Read Part 2 here.)
She lost her trans son to suicide. Can a Kentucky lawmaker make her colleagues care?
William Wan, The Washington Post
“If they’re going to pass these bills,” said Karen Berg, “I want them to see me and my dead child and know that they are killing other Henrys.”
I Never Called Her Momma
Jenisha Watts, The Atlantic
The author’s childhood in a crack house, and what followed.
Enter the Rooster
Oliver Whang, The New York Times Magazine
A story about fighting-cock breeders that takes an unexpected turn in Southern Vermont.
Breaking News
Paige Williams, The New Yorker
A local newspaper in Oklahoma exposes a sheriff’s office that’s both corrupt and bloodthirsty.
