The Best American Essays
Encyclopedia
The Best American Essays is a yearly anthology of magazine articles published in the United States. It was started in 1986 and is now part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin
. Articles are chosen using the same procedure with other titles in the Best American series; the series editor chooses about 100 article candidates, from which the guest editor picks 25 or so for publication; the remaining runner-up articles listed in the appendix. The series is edited by Robert Atwan
, and Joyce Carol Oates
assisted in the editing process up until 2000 with the publication of The Best American Essays of the Century.
Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...
. Articles are chosen using the same procedure with other titles in the Best American series; the series editor chooses about 100 article candidates, from which the guest editor picks 25 or so for publication; the remaining runner-up articles listed in the appendix. The series is edited by Robert Atwan
Robert Atwan
Robert Atwan is an essayist and editor of several anthologies of literature. He attended Seton Hall University and Rutgers University....
, and Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
assisted in the editing process up until 2000 with the publication of The Best American Essays of the Century.
Guest editors since 2000
- 2000: Alan LightmanAlan LightmanAlan Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the...
- 2001: Kathleen NorrisKathleen NorrisKathleen Thompson Norris was an American novelist and wife of fellow writer Charles Norris, whom she wed in 1909...
- 2002: Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
- 2003: Anne FadimanAnne FadimanAnne Fadiman is an American author, editor and teacher.She is the daughter of the renowned literary, radio and television personality Clifton Fadiman and World War II correspondent and author Annalee Jacoby Fadiman...
- 2004: Louis MenandLouis MenandLouis Menand is an American writer and academic, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Metaphysical Club , an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America....
- 2005: Susan OrleanSusan OrleanSusan Orlean is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside....
- 2006: Lauren SlaterLauren SlaterLauren Slater is an American psychologist and writer. She is the author of six books, including Welcome To My Country , Prozac Diary , and Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir...
- 2007: David Foster WallaceDavid Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
- 2008: Adam GopnikAdam GopnikAdam Gopnik, is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife...
- 2009: Mary OliverMary OliverMary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...
- 2010: Christopher HitchensChristopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
- 2011: Edwidge Danticat