10:00 - 11:30
United States
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 5,000—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. We recommend reading the selection a second time as well.
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.
May 2026 Selection
"Clouds and Rain over Three Gorges" by Xujun Eberlein.
The man I’m now married to was a foreigner in 1987, when he and I took a heretical hike along the Yangtze. We went to the mountains of Wushan through which the renowned Three Gorges are carved. According to a Tang Dynasty poem,Water is hardly water after experiencing oceans / Clouds are no longer clouds apart from Wushan’s mountains. Until a dam—said to be the world’s largest—cut the Yangtze into two halves at the waist, those damned words were so poignant that they could make the stoic sentimental.
American Literary Review, 2014
Access options:
- Read on the American Literary Review website
- Email mnc@sfpl.org to request a PDF