HELLO and welcome to the 139th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about Edward Albee! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

The Making of the Keller Black Widow (October 2013), by Claire St. Amant for Dallas Culturemap – This story wants to know if Michele Williams got away with murder! MURDERING HER HUSBAND, no less. I am 95% sure that the answer to this question is “yes” and there’s a bunch of updates at the bottom ’cause this shit went down recently and a new trial starts soon.

Greed Before The Fall (July 2014), by Choe Sang-Hun, Martin Fackler, Alison Leigh Cowan and Scott Sayare for The New York Times – All about the asshole who caused the ferry sinking in South Korea in April and the system that made it possible for it to happen. This is so horrible, and stuff like this happens all over the world, you know.

The American Room (July 2014) by Paul Ford for medium – I’m not sure if I loved this piece or not? It’s about the rooms we see in YouTube. Which I do find interesting. Low ceilings, et al.

My Runaway Childhood (June 2014), by Melissa Chadburn for narrative.ly – Wow this is intense. This girl’s mother was abusive and stood by when terrible things happened to her and so she ran away and eventually became legally emancipated.

Kara Swisher is Silicon Valley’s Most Feared and Well-Liked Journalist. How Does That Work? (July 2014), by Benjamin Wallace for New York Magazine – I mean she calls herself “Sherlock Homo,” so.

Slaves of Happiness Island (August 2009), by Molly Crabapple for Vice – Horrific conditions, terrible lies, and dismal pay for the migrant construction workers who are building The Louvre and NYU buildings in Abu Dhabi. Molly also did all the illustrations for the piece, you probably know her work.

The Art of Memoir #1: Mary Karr (Winter 2009), by Amanda Fortini for The Paris Review – i loved this so much!!! “It’s difficult to accept what your psyche or history dooms you to write, what Faulkner would call your postage stamp of reality. Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. For almost ten years it didn’t occur to me that I should exploit Daddy’s blue-collar idiom. I was trying to pass for edge-u-kated.”

The Girl In The Window (July 2008), by Lane deGregory for The Tampa Bay-Times – WHY DO I RUIN MY OWN LIFE BY READING THINGS LIKE THIS. This is like that one story that was the most horrifying thing I’d ever read. This is also a situation where a Mom let her child starve in a closet filled with human waste for six years until she was finally rescued by the Florida Department of Children and Families but she is still learning how to be a person.

Passion Plays: The Making of Edward Albee (April 2005), by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker – I actually saw the production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that prompted the writing of this particular profile of this particular man for this particular magazine. I’ve seen a few of his plays and also I saw him read and do a Q&A at a bookstore in Northern Michigan and it was really fantastic. I remember when he said he didn’t like any contemporary plays and someone was like “What about Angels in America?” I was like that is such an oddly specific question to ask.

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