I t’s been years, and Lillian Whayne is still pissed off. In the summer of 2017, Whayne, 55, decided to go all-out planning a trip for her friends to the 2018 Coachella music festival. Through a company called Confirmed360, which supplies VIP experiences to superfans and high-income clientele, the Kentucky-based …
Read More »Sebastian Perez Did Not Have to Die
On Saturday, June 26th, Sebastian Perez worked alone in a field at Ernst Nursery & Farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, about 35 miles south of Portland. He had just turned 38 years old, with dark eyes and a strong, sturdy build. He wore jeans, work-boots, a long sleeve cotton shirt, …
Read More »The Real-Life Zola on Storytelling, Sex Work, and Turning Trauma Into Art
Most writers are intimately familiar with the near-impossible task of writing a compelling lede — the first few lines of a story designed to hook the reader and draw them in. Yet in 2015, a former Hooters waitress from Detroit logged onto her Twitter account and did it in seconds. …
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