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Today kicks off our annual year-end series. We’re grateful for another year of Longreads and thank our members for their continued support. With the community’s help, we published dozens of original stories and reading lists from both established and emerging writers, including contributors who had never been published before. Each week, our editors also read and recommended exceptional nonfiction stories from across the web.
Our Best of 2023 collection honors writers, journalists, news publications, and literary outlets publishing important, moving, and memorable work. We’re thrilled to launch this collection with a list of our 10 most popular essays and reported stories.
—Carolyn, Cheri, Krista, Peter, and Seyward
1. The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews
Will McCarthy | January 3, 2023 | 12 minutes (3,313 words)
Glimpses of humanity in an unlikely corner of the internet.
2. Who’s Afraid of Lorne Michaels?
Seth Simons | August 17, 2023 | 15 minutes (4,165 words)
Very rarely can we see an entire system reflected in one person. The creator and executive producer of Saturday Night Live is such a person.
3. How to Survive a Car Crash in 10 Easy Steps
Anne Lagamayo | May 11, 2023 | 4,252 words (15 minutes)
A journalist navigates a world forever changed by her traumatic brain injury.
4. The Road to Becoming Enough
Cassidy Randall | February 16, 2023 | 4,141 words (15 minutes)
I began, if not to turn away from the mythical notion of a man to “complete” me, to accept that there was no love out there for me. I chose mountains instead.
5. Fast Times on America’s Slowest Train
Harrison Scott Key | October 3, 2023 | 14 minutes (4,055 words)
A surreal train ride between Chicago and New Orleans proves that Amtrak still has a lot to offer. (Not including speed or the food.)
6. Meals for One
Sharanya Deepak | June 22, 2023 | 19 minutes (5,246 words)
On what it means to nourish ourselves and others.
7. Bad Tape
Dan Hernandez | February 28, 2023 | 16 minutes (4,503 words)
What I learned about judgment from a car thief, a bank robber, and a mysterious VHS.
8. I Tried to Forget My Whole Life. I’m Glad I Failed.
John Paul Scotto | July 6, 2023 | 11 minutes (3,069 words)
The hindsight of an adulthood autism diagnosis.
9. The Teacher Crush
Jessica L. Pavia | February 21, 2023 | 20 minutes (5,721 words)
What happens when a teenager develops a risky infatuation?
10. Age, Sex, Location
Kira Homsher | March 14, 2023 | 3,308 words (12 minutes)
Chatrooms taught me everything I needed to know about what real people were like before I had to grow up and become one of them.
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