Social: Longform Article Reading Club

Discuss a longform magazine or newspaper article with a group of longreads fans in this new monthly club from the Magazines and Newspapers Center. It’s like a book club, but instead of books we discuss periodical articles of approximately 10,000 words in length, which take about an hour to read.   

To participate, read the month's selection ahead of time, then join the discussion at the appointed time and location.  

The agenda of the meeting includes round-robin introductions, a forty-five minute discussion utilizing the shared inquiry method, and then a final twenty minutes to share any other thoughts the article brought up for you.  

Typically, selections can be investigative journalism, creative writing, personal essay or another genre, as long as it was originally published in a periodical.  

Sign-up for the Longform Article Club email list to get the monthly selections delivered to your inbox. 

July 2026 Selection

“The Missing Person: Kafka the Tourist” by Kate Zambreno  

Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2019  

Judging from how Kafka talks about traveling in his diaries, he’s a frail and neurotic man urged by the obsession to write—but in this patchwork essay of tidy squares and literary headings, Zambreno associates him with photography, Paris, Lake Maggiore, art theft and historical occurrences both literally connected to his life and figuratively relevant. Does Kafka get what Kafka complains about wanting? In reconstructing Kafka’s history through her own obsessive research and placing the writer’s process within the essay itself, Zambreno presents a portrait both splintered and replete of the famous Czeck author as a young man. 

Access options:  

• Read on the Virgina Quarterly Review website  
• Read in digital replica on eLibrary, a library database (SFPL card required) 
• Read on JSTOR   
• Email mnc@sfpl.org to request a PDF of the article