Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

A ’60s Poet, Mixing Images of Asia and Africa with Bohemian London

[Rosemary] Tonks’s first poetry collection, Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms, was published in 1963; her second and final one, Iliad of Broken Sentences, in 1967. She interweaves images of her years in Asia and Africa with snapshots of bohemian London: desert oases and mirages, jazz and cocktails. True to the first collection’s title, the poems carry a […]

Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

'Write What You Want — But Be Prepared for the Consequences'

I’m reasonably certain that John Ashcroft didn’t recognize himself disguised as the evil high school guidance counselor in one of my novels. But like so much else, this thorny matter requires consideration on a case-by-case basis. In Mary McCarthy’s story “The Cicerone,” Peggy Guggenheim, the important collector of modern art, appears as Polly Grabbe, an […]

Posted inUncategorized

Submit a Story to Longreads

Publishers, writers, readers: You can submit a story to be featured as one of our upcoming Longreads Member Exclusives.   We choose one story per week to send to our paid members, and we pay rights holders to reprint the story.  Submission guidelines are below. You can email your submission, as a PDF or text file, […]

Posted inUncategorized

The story of Dan Marlowe, a pulp writer who suffered from amnesia, befriended an ex-con, and later inspired writers like Stephen King: Physicians thought the amnesia was psychosomatic, brought on by stress and money troubles, but there were hints of physical problems too. Before his brain emptied out, Marlowe had been laid low by crushing […]