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The Best American Essays 2021

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“The world is abundant even in bad times; it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness,” writes guest editor Kathryn Schulz in the introduction to The Best American Essays 2021 . Featuring essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Molly McCully Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Wesley Morris, to name a few, this installment of the annual anthology captures writers at work during a historic year of grief and tumult. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one during the pandemic to an exploration of the political and aesthetic history of a mustache, this collection demonstrates what it is to be writing during an unprecedented time, offering readers and writers solace and inspiration through rigorous prose.  

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Nonfiction Books » Essays

The best essays: the 2021 pen/diamonstein-spielvogel award, recommended by adam gopnik.

WINNER OF the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Interview by Benedict King

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle

Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé

Maybe the People Would be the Times by Luc Sante

1 Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

2 unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, 3 nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, 4 terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, 5 maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

W e’re talking about the books shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay . As an essayist yourself, or as a reader of essays, what are you looking for? What’s the key to a good essay ?

Let’s turn to the books that made the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. The winning book was Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich , whose books have been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Tell me more. 

One of the criteria for this particular prize is that it should be not just for a single book, but for a body of work. One of the things we wanted to honour about Barbara Ehrenreich is that she has produced a remarkable body of work. Although it’s offered in a more specifically political register than some essayists, or that a great many past prize winners have practised, the quiddity of her work is that it remains rooted in personal experience, in the act of bearing witness. She has a passionate political point to make, certainly, a series of them, many seeming all the more relevant now than when she began writing. Nonetheless, her writing still always depends on the intimacy of first-hand knowledge, what people in post-incarceration work call ‘lived experience’ (a term with a distinguished philosophical history). Her book Nickel and Dimed is the classic example of that. She never writes from a distance about working-class life in America. She bears witness to the nature and real texture of working-class life in America.

“One point of giving awards…is to keep passing the small torches of literary tradition”

Next up of the books on the 2021 PEN essay prize shortlist is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick is a writer who’s been around for a very long time. Although longevity is not in itself a criterion for excellence—or for this prize, or in the writing life generally—persistence and perseverance are. Writers who keep coming back at us, again and again, with a consistent vision, are surely to be saluted. For her admirers, her appetite to re-read things already read is one of the most attractive parts of her oeuvre , if I can call it that; her appetite not just to read but to read deeply and personally. One of the things that people who love her work love about it is that her readings are never academic, or touched by scholarly hobbyhorsing. They’re readings that involve the fullness of her experience, then applied to literature. Although she reads as a critic, she reads as an essayist reads, rather than as a reviewer reads. And I think that was one of the things that was there to honour in her body of work, as well.

Is she a novelist or journalist, as well?

Let’s move on to the next book which made the 2021 PEN essay shortlist. This is Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle.

I have a special reason for liking this book in particular, and that is that it corresponds to one of the richest and oldest of American genres, now often overlooked, and that’s the naturalist essay. You can track it back to Henry David Thoreau , if not to Ralph Waldo Emerson , this American engagement with nature , the wilderness, not from a narrowly scientific point of view, nor from a purely ecological or environmental point of view—though those things are part of it—but again, from the point of view of lived experience, of personal testimony.

Let’s look at the next book on the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Awards, which is Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé. Why did these essays appeal?

One of the things that was appealing about this book is that’s it very much about, in every sense, the issues of the day: the idea of place, of where we are, how we are located on any map as individuals by ethnic identity, class, gender—all of those things. But rather than being carried forward in a narrowly argumentative way, again, in the classic manner of the essay, Sajé’s work is ruminative. It walks around these issues from the point of view of someone who’s an expatriate, someone who’s an émigré, someone who’s a world citizen, but who’s also concerned with the idea of ‘terroir’, the one place in the world where we belong. And I think the dialogue in her work between a kind of cosmopolitanism that she has along with her self-critical examination of the problem of localism and where we sit on the world, was inspiring to us.

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Last of the books on the shortlist for the 2021 Pen essay award is Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante.

Again, here’s a writer who’s had a distinguished generalised career, writing about lots of places and about lots of subjects. In the past, he’s made his special preoccupation what he calls ‘low life’, but I think more broadly can be called the marginalized or the repressed and abject. He’s also written acute introductions to the literature of ‘low life’, the works of Asbury and David Maurer, for instance.

But I think one of the things that was appealing about what he’s done is the sheer range of his enterprise. He writes about countless subjects. He can write about A-sides and B-sides of popular records—singles—then go on to write about Jacques Rivette’s cinema. He writes from a kind of private inspection of public experience. He has a lovely piece about tabloid headlines and their evolution. And I think that omnivorous range of enthusiasms and passions is a stirring reminder in a time of specialization and compartmentalization of the essayist’s freedom to roam. If Pyle is in the tradition of Thoreau, I suspect Luc Sante would be proud to be put in the tradition of Baudelaire—the flaneur who walks the streets, sees everything, broods on it all and writes about it well.

One point of giving awards, with all their built-in absurdity and inevitable injustice, is to keep alive, or at least to keep passing, the small torches of literary tradition. And just as much as we’re honoring the great tradition of the naturalist essay in the one case, I think we’re honoring the tradition of the Baudelairean flaneur in this one.

April 18, 2021

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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

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Longreads : The best longform stories on the web

Nine Longreads Stories Recognized Across This Year’s ‘Best American’ and ‘Year’s Best’ Series

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Our team is thrilled to announce four anthology inclusions and five notable mentions across the 2021 Best American and Year’s Best series. Congratulations to the following Longreads contributors — and to all the writers featured in these editions — for their exceptional, memorable work.

The Best American Essays 2021

Notable mentions:

“ On Solitude (and Isolation and Loneliness [and Brackets]) ” by Sarah Fay

Sarah Fay reflects on four years spent in solitude (and isolation [and loneliness]), viewing it through the lens of punctuation. An adapted version of Sarah’s essay will be included in her forthcoming memoir, Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses .

“ How to Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries ” by Irina Dumitrescu

Irina Dumitrescu , an essayist and professor of medieval English literature, binged for six months on online courses led by celebrities like RuPaul, Anna Wintour, and Gordon Ramsay. Her piece on MasterClass is a delightful take on discovery, the power of celebrity, and learning new things.

“ Through a Glass, Tearfully ” by Maureen Stanton

This heartfelt and illuminating essay by Maureen Stanton recounts her history of crying in inappropriate moments while also considering tears from gender-based and political perspectives. Read it and weep.

“ (Who Gets to) Just Up and Move ” by Nicole Walker

In a poignant personal piece on climate change and the erasure of the Ute and Shoshone Tribes from Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, Nicole Walker beautifully contemplates the nature of migration.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021

Included in the anthology:

“ An Atlas of the Cosmos ” by Shannon Stirone

How do you map the entirety of the cosmos? Shannon Stirone ‘s feature explores our deep need as humans to understand exactly where we are within the vastness of space. This is the third year in a row that Shannon’s features have been included in this series; read “ The Hunt for Planet Nine” and “ Welcome to the Center of the Universe ” for more of her science writing.

The Best American Food Writing 2021

“ Soli/dairy/ty ” by Liza Monroy

“What is human responsibility to other species?” In a piece about going vegan, nursing mother Liza Monroy reconsiders the dairy cow — and questions the meaning of compassion.

Notable mention:

“ Marmalade: A Very British Obsession ” by Olivia Potts

In this charming, delightfully nerdy deep dive into a beloved fruit preserve, Olivia Potts explores why marmalade holds a central role in British life and British culture. (This piece was also shortlisted for the 2021 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards .)

The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021

“ Out There: On Not Finishing ” by Devin Kelly

What happens if the stories we tell ourselves about our lives leave us lonely, wrestling with meaning? Poet and teacher Devin Kelly contemplates the act of running, the emptiness of accomplishment, and the loneliness of obsession.

“ Shades of Grey ” by Ashley Stimpson

In 2018, Floridians voted overwhelmingly to end greyhound racing, a sport they were told was archaic and inhumane. But what if they were wrong? Ashley Stimpson offers a fascinating, nuanced look at the controversial sport — and the future of the breed in a world without it.

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The Best American Essays 2021

Edited by kathryn schulz. mariner, $16.99 trade paper (256p) isbn 978-0-358-38175-4.

Reviewed on: 09/09/2021

Genre: Nonfiction

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The Best American Essays 2021

Description.

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker  staff writer Kathryn Schulz “The world is abundant even in bad times,” guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, “it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness.” The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others

• Kathryn Schulz - Editor
• Robert Atwan - Author

Kindle Book

• Release date: April 16, 2024

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• ISBN: 9780358381228
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Kindle Book Release date: April 16, 2024

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9780358381228 Release date: April 16, 2024

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9780358381228 File size: 2863 KB Release date: April 16, 2024

• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

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The Best American Essays 2022 Paperback – November 1, 2022

A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” ( Washington Post ), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Mariner Books
• Publication date November 1, 2022
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 035865887X
• ISBN-13 978-0358658870
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

“ New Yorker  writer Schulz ( Being Wrong ) collects essays that skillfully combine journalistic and literary sensibilities in this powerful addition to the annual anthology series… This is a moving retrospective of a singular year.” — Publishers Weekly on The Best American Essays 2021

“These essays challenge personal and political assumptions and show us life in all its complexities and contradictions. Which in this American moment, and in every other, matters.” — USA Today

“[A] thoughtful entry in the long-running series...The works in this year’s collection are a mix of the disconcerting, the probing, and the self-reflective, and well-suited to challenging times.” — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

ALEXANDER CHEE is the best-selling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel . He is a contributing editor at the New Republic , and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review . His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 , the New York Times Magazine , the New York Times Book Review , the New Yorker , T Magazine,   Slate , Vulture , among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books (November 1, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 035865887X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358658870
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
• #146 in American Fiction Anthologies
• #428 in Essays (Books)
• #1,204 in Writing Reference

About the author

Robert atwan.

Robert Atwan is the founder and series editor of the annual Best American Essays. The editor of numerous anthologies, he has written on the ancient literature of the Near East and his critical essays and poetry reviews have appeared in many national periodicals. Laurance Wieder is the author of several volumes of poetry, including The Coronet of Tours; No Harm Done; The Last Century: Selected Poems; and One Hundred Fifty Psalms, a complete psalter. He has taught Bible and Ancient Authors at Cornell University.

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Exciting and unexpected: Best American Essays Notable List

by nicolebreit | creative writing

It’s such an honour for my name to appear on this year’s Notable list among so many writers I admire including Randon Billings Noble, Jill Talbot, Brian Doyle and the winner of the Best American Essay, Emily Maloney for her stunning piece, “Cost of Living”.

It’s funny how inspired thinking and timing sometimes works. Last week I felt the sudden inspiration to record myself reading “An Atmospheric Pressure” so I could share the piece as an audio file with my students who are studying the lyric essay. Now that there is new interest in my piece I am all set to share it with a wider audience in a new way — Room magazine will be posting my audio file to their website in a few weeks.

If you haven’t read “An Atmospheric Pressure” but are interested in learning more, this interview with Mica Leminski sums up the “story behind the story” of my mixed time-lapse piece about first love and loss.

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For lisa levy illness is easy, pain is hard, the books of susan sontag, ranked, a fickle superfan’s guide to the dark lady of letters, julia dahl: crime fiction among the pious, getting tipsy with the author of conviction, 5 crime must-reads to devour coming this march, lisa levy recommends leah carroll, amy engel, and others, crime and murder among the mormons, lisa levy on the unlikely utah noir of mette ivie harrison, so who exactly is bob dylan, newly crowned nobel laureate, the poet vs. songwriter vs. showman debate rages on, more big literary biographies of women, please, on biography, pathography, and ruth franklin's life of shirley jackson, want a baby">but are you sure you want a baby, on a side-by-side reading of ian mcewan and belle boggs, bouchercon 2016, new orleans: an oral history, favorite moments from this year's big easy crime fiction bash, bouchercon: five events to see this week in new orleans, a preview of the largest mystery fan convention in the us, in defense of trash, why pleasures should never be guilty, from valley of the dolls to bonkbusters, women crime writers are not a fad, and megan abbott is here to prove it, on the pleasures of pre-internet fandom, lisa levy recalls the intensity of private discovery, american noir and the outlaw lit of james sallis, in praise of a great american crime writer, we need more first-hand books about urban poverty, lisa levy on dreamland , evicted , and the cook up, live from the edgars, crime writing’s big night, lisa levy reports on walter mosley, kareem abdul-jabbar, and speed-eating while live-tweeting, secrets and lies: why the best spies are married, on chris pavone's finely wrought espionage fiction, adrian mckinty: working-class hero of irish crime fiction, lisa levy profiles the man behind the sean duffy series, the fine grim line between love and stalking, lisa levy on the crime fiction of caroline kepnes.

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The best american essays 2022.

On Sale: November 1, 2022

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A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” ( Washington Post ), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

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