Elephants on Parade
The James Franco and Annie Hathaway (what, we’re tight) of newsletters is dusting off our tweed jacket for Magazines’ Biggest Night.
What would make the perfect women’s magazine? Juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal examinations of women’s lives—and none of the advertiser obligations. Welcome to the Spread, where every week two editors read, listen, and watch it all, and deliver only the best to your inbox.
Glowing Spreadangels,
That shaking you felt this morning wasn’t an earthquake—at least not by its technical definition, having to do with tectonic plates and so forth. No, it was the result of one Eagerly Anticipated Book hitting bookstores across North America: That’s right, The Kingdom of Prep: The Rise and (Near) Fall of J.Crew1 by Maggie Bullock is out today! (You can order it here or here.)
Obviously, your Spreaditors are out toasting Maggie’s Gargantuan Achievement (and yes, this is Rachel at the keyboard, hi), but we wouldn’t—couldn’t!—leave you hanging. So we combed the recently announced National Magazine Award finalists and are bringing you the Spready-est stories of the lot. (The winners will be announced on March 28; if you’re as nerdy as we are, you can follow along via Twitter here.) For the blissfully uninitiated, the National Magazine Awards, which industry folks call the ASMEs (the American Society of Magazine Editors produces the whole ballyhoo) and delusionally describe as “the Oscars of magazines!” (If someone refers to the proceedings as “the Ellies,” it’s a surefire sign they don’t know what they’re talking about—the industry equivalent of thinking fetch actually happened. An Ellie is, however, is the nickname for the elephantine statuette that winners receive.)
This year, the all-important precursor awards—the Spreadies, natch—predicted several finalists. (Basically, we’re the two-woman equivalent of the SAGs, PGAs, WGAs, Globes, BAFTAs, and the Indie Spirits combined.) We crowned queen Jazmine Hughes for sublime profiles of Viola Davis and Whoopi Goldberg and gave our highest kudos to Glamour’s stop-you-in-your-tracks photo essay about a mother’s first month postpartum. We also honored both Harper’s Bazaar’s Rachel Tashjian, who notched an ASME nod for Reviews and Criticism, and New York’s Allison P. Davis, who scored with ASME in the Columns and Essays category for her personal epic about the wilds of online dating, with a Golden Jello Mold in December. Because we work for you all year long, we spent 2022 singing the praises of finalists Kerry Howley, Jia Tolentino, Andrea Long Chu, Emily Bazelon2, Wesley Morris, and Stephania Taladrid, and Brock Colyar, who’s getting an ASME Next Award for outstanding journalists under 30. And early adopters that we are, we were plainly smitten with Romper’s “Best C-Section Ever” from the get-go.
But as a wise man named Levar Burton once said, don’t take our word for it. (Except, you know, please do.) Herewith, an ASME-picked, Spread-refined reading list to tide you over until we meet again next week.
As always,
Rachel & Maggie
Service Journalism
Romper for “Best C-Section Ever.” Read it here.
SELF for “The Future of Fitness Issue.” Read it here.
Lifestyle Journalism
New York for “The Year of the Nepo Baby.” Read it here.
Reporting
Mother Jones for “She Never Hurt Her Kids. So Why Is a Mother Serving More Time Than the Man Who Abused Her Daughter?,” by Samantha Michaels. Read it here.
The New York Times Magazine for “The Battle for Baby L.,” by Rozina Ali. Read it here.
Feature Writing
The Believer for “Aristocrat Inc.,” by Natalie So. Read it here.
Esquire for “The Militiamen, the Governor, and the Kidnapping That Wasn’t,” by Chris Heath. Read it here.
ProPublica with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for “The Landlord & the Tenant,” by Raquel Rutledge and Ken Armstrong. Read it here.
Profile Writing
New York for “The Woman Who Killed Roe,” by Kerry Howley. Read it here.
The New York Times Magazine for two articles by Jazmine Hughes. Read “Viola Davis, Inside Out” here and “Ms. Big Mouth” here.
The Verge with Epic Magazine for “Searching for Susy Thunder,” by Claire L. Evans. Read it here.
Columns and Essays
New York for “Tinder Hearted,” by Allison P. Davis. Read it here.
The New York Times Magazine for two articles by Wesley Morris. Read “The Majesty, Legacy and Complicated Power of a Good Sob. For Crying Out Loud” here and “Trash Nation” here.
The New Yorker for three articles by Jia Tolentino. Read “A Post-Roe Threat” here, “The Post-Roe Era” here, and “Is Abortion Sacred?” here.
Stranger’s Guide for “Acid Church” by Courtney Desiree Morris. Read it here.
Reviews and Criticism
Harper’s Bazaar for three articles by Rachel Tashjian. Read “Christopher John Rogers and the Dawn of the Cultured Zoomer Doyenne” here, “The Prada Show Was Confusing. But That’s the Point” here, and “I Love Joan Didion’s Stuff” here.
New York for three articles by Andrea Long Chu. Read “Hanya's Boys” here, “Ottessa Moshfegh Is Praying for Us” here, and “The Mixed Asian Metaphor” here.
The New York Review of Books for “‘She’s Capital!,” by Namwali Serpell. Read it here.
Public Interest
The Atlantic for "We Need to Take Away Children.," by Caitlin Dickerson. Read it here.
Glamour for “The Time to Pass Paid Leave Is Now,” by Natasha Pearlman, and “28 Days,” by Natasha Pearlman and Ruhama Wolle. Read “Paid Leave” here and “28 Days” here.
The New York Times Magazine for “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” by Emily Bazelon. Read it here.
The New Yorker for three articles about post-Roe life by Stephania Taladrid. Read “An Abortion Odyssey” here, “Roe’s Final Hours in One of America’s Largest Abortion Clinics” here, and “The Abortion Underground” here.
Podcasting:
Radiotopia’s Articles of Interest for “American Ivy” by Avery Trufelman. Listen here.
Video:
Insider for “The True Cost of Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” produced by Katie Nixdorf. Watch it here.
Mother Jones for “Failure to Protect,” reported by Samantha Michaels, produced by Mark Helenowski. (Note: the article from whence this video was spun is a finalist for reporting!) Watch it here.
Check out the full list of finalists here.
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