In her introduction to this yearโs The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections โcontribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.โ Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authorsโ unapologetic observations of the world around them. From an inmate struggling to find purpose during his prison sentence to a doctor coping with the unpredictable nature of her patient, to a widow wishing for just a little more time with her late husband, these narrativesโand the others featured in this anthologyโcelebrate the endurance of the human spirit.
The Best American Essays 2023 includes Ciara Alfaro โข Jillian Barnet โข Sylvie Baumgartel โข Eric Borsuk โข Chris Dennis โข Xujun Eberlein โข Sandra Hager Eliason โข George Estreich โข Merrill Joan Gerber โข Debra Gwartney โข Edward Hoagland โข Laura Kipnis โข Phillip Lopate โข Celeste Marcus โข Sam Meekings โข Sigrid Nunez โข Kathryn Schulz โข Anthony Siegel โข Scott Spencer โข Angelique Stevens โข David Treuer
VIVIAN GORNICK is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachmentsโranked the best memoir of the last fifty years by the New York TimesโThe Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader, as well as the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story.
ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.