A friend of mine has a bit of a thing for Adam Moss, EIC of New York Magazine. Thus I (happily) found myself at Housing Works on Wednesday night for “Behind the LongReads,” an event pairing long-form site LongReads with the magazine.

As moderator, Adam spoke with several NY contributing editors about working on pieces that have garnered awards and accolades. Wesley Yang, Jessica Pressler and Dan P. Lee discussed their articles, which focus on (respectively) the state of Asian-American life circa Tiger Mom, Ken Starr’s stripper wife, and the deceased owner of the violent “Travis the Chimpanzee.”

Adam briefly spoke about the state of long-form journalism, which saw its heyday in the 60’s, headed by journalists like Tom Wolfe and Nora Ephron. Though certain readers currently consider any story over 400 words too long or boring, there’s still an appreciation for it, as shown by the popularity of these three stories.

Wesley started his piece (“Paper Tigers”) on the defensive, being asked to write it because he was (I believe) the only Asian-American writer on staff. Welsey did not have a Tiger Mom, but as he began talking to people, he became aware of several disturbing issues Asians-Americans face. One is what he called “the bamboo ceiling,” where Asian-Americans get to a certain point in their careers and are then passed over for top management positions. Another is social anxiety issues, as indicated by JT Tran, the “Asian Playboy” who left his rocket science job to become the foremost in pickup artistry. Wesley connected his findings with musings on his own experiences and views. Though he and his editor tried to make the piece “as coherent as we possibly could,” they realized its major appeal was revealing “moments of pathos.” The article is the most visited story on the NY site and Wesley is now expanding it into a book.

Jessica’s piece, “A Holly Golightly for the Stripper-Embezzlement Age,” is a profile which started as a “weird, sweet love story” and turned into something more dark and complex. Jessica had followed the story of Ken Starr, financial adviser, who’d fallen for a stripper named Diane. After spending massive amounts of $$ on her, Ken resorted to fraud for even more funds. Now in jail, Ken is still in touch with Diane, though they are apparently going through divorce proceedings. Through spending time with Diane, Jessica became quite close to her—so much so that Diane was actually in the audience at Housing Works.

Dan’s tale behind “Travis the Menace” was…well, like the story itself, kind of nuts. When the “Travis the chimp” story broke back in 2009 (you’ll remember, the chimp who nearly killed his owner’s friend), Dan was intrigued. But some time later, while watching an Oprah ep about the survivor, Dan was glued to the screen: “It was the most compelling thing I’d ever seen in my life.” The survivor’s “people” were not amenable to allowing him access, and both Sandy the owner and Travis were at this point deceased. But though a lucky break in a chat room (“They still exist!”) Dan connected with someone close to Sandy. After initially meeting her at a Jamba Juice, he proceeded to get about forty hours-worth of interview—as well as access to a box that contained some of Sandy’s personal things.

After discussing their pieces, the writers spoke about finding their sources, sussing out honesty, and others’ reactions to their articles. Dan said that his closest sources thought the piece had portrayed Sandy more honestly than other reports. Jessica noted that she hadn’t discussed the piece with Diane, but that they were still friendly. And Wesley said that the 800+ comments on his piece had been somewhat mixed—though (he concluded in a deadpan tone): “I put more trust in the ones who thought it was really good.”