The Best American Essays

The Best American Essays
Name	The Best American Essays
Editor	Robert Atwan (series editor); rotating guest editors
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	The Best American Series
Genre	Anthology
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin (formerly); HarperCollins
Pub date	1986–present
Media type	Print, ebook

The Best American Essays is an annual anthology that collects notable essays published in the United States and Canada, curated by a series editor and a rotating guest editor. The series emphasizes literary nonfiction drawn from a wide range of magazines, journals, and online publications and has become a touchstone for contemporary essayists, critics, and readers. It sits alongside other series volumes that highlight fiction, travel writing, and science writing in North American letters.

Overview

The series originated as part of a broader effort to survey annual achievements in literary forms and sits within the publishing ecosystem that includes magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and Granta. Each volume brings together diverse voices who have appeared in outlets like The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Tin House, Ploughshares, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Boston Review, Salamander Magazine, Conjunctions, Prairie Schooner, and The Kenyon Review. The essays often engage with public figures and institutions—readers may encounter pieces referencing Barack Obama, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, George Orwell, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Philip Roth, John Updike, E. B. White, George Saunders, Joan Didion).

History and editorial process

The series was inaugurated in 1986 under the aegis of editors connected to major American publishers and academic institutions such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, HarperCollins, Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. Robert Atwan has served as the longtime series editor, with guest editors drawn from prominent literary figures and critics including Anne Fadiman, Edward Hoagland, Mary Karr, David Foster Wallace, Susan Orlean, Samantha Irby, Leslie Jamison, Christopher Hitchens, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, Francine Prose, Jonathan Lethem, and Joan Didion (when applicable to guest-editor style). The selection process typically involves the series editor reading widely across publications such as The New York Review of Books, Harper's Bazaar, Slate, The Guardian (London), The Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio, compiling a longlist that the guest editor narrows to the final table of contents. Works originally appearing in university presses and academic journals—The American Scholar, The Sewanee Review—can also surface. The editorial criteria valorize craft and originality, balance of subject matter, and representation drawn from regional publications such as The Missouri Review, Gulf Coast, Plainsong, Southern Review, and North American Review.

Notable contributors and essays

Across decades the series has featured essays by established and emerging writers including Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E. B. White, Anne Lamott, Susan Sontag, Truman Capote, David Foster Wallace, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, A. M. Homes, Eula Biss, Rebecca Solnit, George Saunders, Taiye Selasi, Leslie Jamison, Samantha Irby, Zadie Smith, Philip Lopate, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Susan Orlean, Graham Greene, Ryszard Kapuściński, Roxane Gay, Richard Rodriguez, Nicholas Kristof, Michael Pollan, Rachel Carson, Evelyn Waugh, Kazuo Ishiguro—the list spans novelists, journalists, critics, poets, and public intellectuals whose essays address subjects from literary history to personal memoir, cultural criticism, and reportage. Individual volumes have preserved landmark pieces that later circulated widely in academic syllabi and public discourse, appearing alongside investigative essays sourced from outlets such as ProPublica, The Intercept, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic.

Reception and impact

The anthology has shaped conversations in contemporary literature, influencing syllabi at institutions like Columbia University School of the Arts, Iowa Writers' Workshop, New York University, Stanford University, University of Iowa, Brown University, University of Michigan, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Virginia. Critics in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review have debated its selections and editorial stance. The series also intersects with major literary prizes and organizations including the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN America, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, and Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Its reputation has helped launch careers and consolidate the standing of essayists within the American literary canon.

Editions and anthologies

Each annual volume is typically titled by year (for example, a 2019 volume) and issued in paperback and ebook formats by major houses such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and HarperCollins. Collected or themed reprints and "best of" compilations occasionally appear, and the series coexists with peer anthologies like The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Travel Writing, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Libraries and archives—Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library—hold runs of the series for research and teaching.

Awards and selection criteria

While the series itself is not a prize, individual essays included have won awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Magazine Award, PEN/Martha Albrand Award, Whiting Awards, Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Award where applicable to short nonfiction. Selection criteria emphasize originality, craftsmanship, voice, and significance, with attention to prior publication venues ranging from national magazines (The New Yorker, The Atlantic) to regional journals (The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares), and investigative platforms (ProPublica, Mother Jones). Guest editors often foreground particular aesthetic or thematic priorities, resulting in volumes that reflect debates about narrative nonfiction and public discourse led in forums such as The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and The Nation.

Category:Essay anthologies