Maybelle Chan's Blog: The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week.

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1. How Massive Cuts Have Remade The Denver Post

Robert Sanchez | 5280 Magazine | Sept. 20, 2016 | 24 minutes (6,158 words)

Behind-the-scenes at an award-winning newspaper, gutted by staff cuts and figuring out how to survive with fewer resources.

2. The Novelist Disguised as a Housewife

Ruth Franklin | New York Magazine | Sept. 27, 2016 | 10 minutes (2,664 words)

An excerpt of Ruth Franklin’s biography of Shirley Jackson, the author of seventeen books and many short stories including “The Lottery,” the bulk of which were written while she was immersed in raising—and being influenced by—her four children.

3. The City Born Great: Fiction by N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin | Tor | Sept. 30, 2016 | 24 minutes (6,427 words)

“When I relax my hands and open my eyes to see Paulo striding along the bridge toward me with another goddamned cigarette between his lips, I fleetingly see him for what he is again: the sprawling thing from my dream, all sparkling spires and reeking slums and stolen rhythms made over with genteel cruelty. I know that he glimpses what I am, too, all the bright light and bluster of me. Maybe he’s always seen it, but there is admiration in his gaze now, and I like it. He comes to help support me with his shoulder, and he says, ‘Congratulations,’ and I grin. I live the city. It thrives and it is mine. I am its worthy avatar, and together? We will never be afraid again.”