Dirt’s Best of 2024 🏅

Our 2024 story superlatives are here! Thank you to everyone that voted. We have more fabulous work coming your way in 2025. To quote the excellent short story Splitting the Rabbit, “And it was corny, I mean lovely, I mean unforgettable in one way or another. The slant of the light, etc. I’m still working out exactly what it was.”

Keep scrolling for more links from around the web. 🤓

And the winners are…

Mood-bender · A story that seamlessly wove a spectrum of feelings in you
⭐ Splitting the Rabbit by Erin Somers

Laughed out loud · A story that left you irresistibly amused
⭐ My First Book by Greta Rainbow

Tearful triumph · A story that broke your heart
⭐ The world has turned and left me here by Alexandra Coburn

Story of the Year · A story that’s a masterpiece
⭐ The world has turned and left me here by Alexandra Coburn

Honorable mentions · other stories that came up across categories

Small Rain by Sarah Moroz, in conversation with Garth Greenwell · The Chic Young Divorcée by Róisín Lanigan · Tupperware days by Alexandra Lange · Animal Subordination by Miriam Gordis · Baby’s all right by Alexandra Tanner · SAD studies by Paula Mejía · Desktop was the place by Patrick McKemey · On filler by Daisy Alioto · My Movie Theater by Erica Berry · Selling subversion by Alexi Gunner · J. Walks by Colin Everest and Nazareno Crea · Worst song ever by friends of Dirt · Requiem for a Slogan Tee by Katie Way · Notes app epiphanies by friends of Dirt · Rock beats scissors by Jane Song · Corporate Fetish by Emily Sundberg · The Sanrio Machete by Michelle Santiago Cortés · The Bakelite Bag by Marlowe Granados · Desperate Hauswives by Claudia Elena Rodriguez · My Movie Theater by Isaac Fitzgerald · Girl drummer by Lara Williams · NEOMbies by Walden Green · Alexandria by Daisy Alioto · Is that right? by Michelle Lyn King · The Sleep Mask by Erin Somers · Pure Enya by Michelle Santiago Cortés · The Desire Question by friends of Dirt · Post-Fragrantica Manifesto by Audrey Robinovitz · Algorithmancy by Baylina Pu · Nepo parents by Zach Schonfeld · Gobsmacked by Savannah Eden Bradley · Now, I’m Thomas Kincaid by Sunday Mancini · In defense of feeling by Miriam Gordis · Heal turn by Long Vo · Mall Memories by Terry Nguyen · Low vibrations by Ashley Bardhan

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• On the Typical Netflix Movie and Tide Pod cinema (n+1) 

• Maybe algorithms are just a scapegoat for something worse (The Atlantic) 

• Kate Wagner calls The Brutalist, “a window onto a side of architecture that is always lurking in the shadows” (The Nation)

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• You can still get a great $20 dinner in New York City (Hell Gate)

• …but if you go to Carbone you might get to see some dick pics (Bustle)

• The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is deaccessioning over a dozen Dutch and Flemish works (artnet)

• Kaila Philo on “the long arc of Black utopianism” (Baffler)

• A list of microgrants for founders

• “My desire for bags is earthly, human, and symbolic for all that can never be sated in my life. My desire might only be extinguished with years of Buddhist meditation practices, I think, practices that will gradually lead me to an Enlightenment free from bags.” (Paris Review)

• A longread on the most hated job in America. (Slate)

• “Perhaps the idea that translators are slippery and treacherous is at its core a fear of anyone who understands multiple languages.” (The Dial)