best essays anthology

The Best Anthologies (So Far) to Read This Year

These 11 anthologies cover the gamut from speculative fiction to explorations on loneliness and incredible encounters with strangers.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Shondaland editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Anthologies are an excellent way to read emerging writers you might not already know, ones you know and love, and multiple perspectives on a theme. They are the perfect format for reading in smaller pieces — easy to pick up, spend a little time with, and put down again. Some of the most well-known annual anthologies, like the Best American series, are on this list, but there are many new and forthcoming anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that are worth picking up this year. On this list are stories of Black romance, YA stories by Latin American writers, and essays on food, loneliness, and random encounters, plus such writers as Janelle Monáe, as well as women and nonbinary writers of Chinese sci-fi, among others.

Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters

Edited by Book Riot columnist and librarian Jessica Pryde, this collection brings together revered authors and emerging voices on the subject of Black love and romance as it is portrayed in contemporary and historical media and beyond the page in lived experiences. Romance is an important element of storytelling across time and culture, so how do Black writers, academics, and librarians see and experience it? Such authors as Kosoko Jackson, Jasmine Guillory, and Beverly Jenkins, among a slew of others, dive into Black romance, the nature of desire and desirability, and how this intertwines with social justice, and more. Also, there are some wonderful happy endings.

The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories

None of the stories in this collection has been published in English before now, and all of them were written and translated by women or nonbinary writers. They explore the edges of reality and imagination, and life and death. A restaurant at the end of the universe, Shakespeare-performing roses, mythical creatures, and ancient heroes and gods populate these imaginative and thought-provoking stories, which will draw you in and maybe even shift your perspective on the “real” world.

The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

With a list of contributors that includes such powerhouse writers as Jhumpa Lahiri, Jesmyn Ward, Lidia Yuknavitch, Yiyun Li, Anthony Doerr, Peter Ho Davies, Lena Dunham, Melissa Febos, and Imani Perry, The Lonely Stories offers 22 perspectives on the joys and struggles of loneliness. Some writers find loneliness in addiction and sobriety, in the pandemic, in immigration, or chronic illness. Some revel in solitude; some find comfort for its sadnesses in other places. Each story is an insight into the meaning and experience of loneliness, which is something everyone encounters in some form or another. It is poignant, sad, uplifting, and hopeful all at once, and a great read whether you feel lonely in the moment or not.

Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer

In case you’re somehow unaware of Janelle Monáe, they are a global superstar artist working as a musician and an actor, and now they can add writer to the mix. While not a traditional anthology, this book of stories from the Dirty Computer universe (created in Monáe’s album of the same name) was written in collaboration with a host of other artists, including Yohanca Delgado, Eve L. Ewing, and Alaya Dawn Johnson. The stories’ themes include exploring life under totalitarian rule and how a special group of people can control minds and erase memories, as well as capturing a life that is out of your control and how experiences can be manipulated. This is a great speculative-fiction collection and a welcome addition to the Janelle Monáe canon.

Reclaim the Stars: 17 Tales Across Realms & Space

In this YA fantasy/speculative-fiction anthology, best-selling authors and newcomers, all from the Latin American diaspora, bring us into the worlds of mermaids and space princesses, Argentinean ghosts, and swamps filled with secrets. Contributors include Vita Ayala, David Bowles, J.C. Cervantes, and Daniel José Older. This book is perfect for young readers and adults alike and is full of immersive and imaginative stories that will transport you to worlds and realms of adventure, love, friendship, community, and the fantastical that lives in all of us.

Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves

This anthology of essays from Catapult ’s online magazine contains work by 30 contributors, including Bassey Ikpi, Bryan Washington, Callum Angus, Destiny O. Birdsong, Eloghosa Osunde, Forsyth Harmon, and A.E. Osworth, among other fantastic writers. These pieces explore the body in all of its endlessly complex existences — stories of the complexities of race, pain and illness, sport, size, geography, ability, gender, sexuality, and age. Bodies are, among many things, intricate, resilient, confusing, and empowering, and we all inhabit one. These writers bring insight and nuance to the weird and wonderful topic of embodiment.

The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners

The Best Short Stories is guest-edited by different people every year and includes winners of the O. Henry Prize, a prestigious literary award. This year’s winners were selected from thousands of stories published in magazines last year and include stories translated from Russian, Bengali, Hebrew, Polish, and Spanish, just to name a few. Each story also includes a note from the writers on what inspired them during the process. It’s a great book to pick up for a wide variety of stories.

The Best American Poetry 2022

Guest editor and poet Matthew Zapruder and series editor David Lehman chose 75 poems from print and online magazines that represent a kaleidoscopic landscape of contemporary American poetry, with contributors who include Jericho Brown, Noor Hindi, Major Jackson, Louise Glück, and Jake Skeets. This is also a great introduction to a wide variety of American poets and the vast manifestations of the English language poetic form.

It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

In this wonderful and only somewhat disturbing book (the subject is horror, after all), queer and trans writers explore the horror films that have shaped them and most reflected their own experiences. Horror, the anthology argues, while often full of misogyny and anti-trans, homophobic tropes, is also uniquely subversive and queer. Exploring tropes like body possession, monsters in the closet, and more, the 25 contributors to this anthology — including Carmen Maria Machado, Addie Tsai, and Bruce Owens Grimm — dive into their relationships with the horror genre while exploring specific movies in the context of queerness, gender, and understanding the self.

The Best American Food Writing 2022

We'd be remiss if we didn’t include this year’s Best American Food Writing on this list, because it’s co-edited by Sohla El-Waylly, and she’s objectively one of the smartest and most delightful people on the internet. She currently makes cooking and food content on a variety of platforms including Food52, the History Channel, and Binging With Babish and is working on a cookbook of her own. While not many details have been released about this anthology yet, El-Waylly is choosing 20 food articles from the past year that “celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country,” according to Bookshop.org , and what more do you need to know? This promises to be one of the best installments of Best American Food Writing yet.

Sarah Neilson is a freelance writer. They can be found on Twitter @sarahmariewrote .

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Welcome to 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology , an ever-growing set of over 180 original 1000-word essays on philosophical questions, theories, figures, and arguments.

We publish new essays frequently, so please check back for updates, follow us on Facebook , Twitter / X , and Instagram , and subscribe by email on this page to receive notifications of new essays.

All of our essays are now available in audio format; many of our essays are available as videos .

Select Recent Essays

Objects and their Parts: The Problem of Material Composition by Jeremy Skrzypek

Artificial Intelligence: The Possibility of Artificial Minds by Thomas Metcalf

The Mind-Body Problem: What Are Minds? by Jacob Berger

Seemings: Justifying Beliefs Based on How Things Seem by Kaj André Zeller

Form and Matter: Hylomorphism by Jeremy W. Skrzypek

Kant’s Theory of the Sublime by Matthew Sanderson

Philosophy of Color by Tiina Carita Rosenqvist

On Karl Marx’s Slogan “From Each According to their Ability, To Each According to their Need” by Sam Badger

Philosophy as a Way of Life by Christine Darr

Philosophy of Mysticism: Do Mystical Experiences Justify Religious Beliefs? by Matthew Sanderson

Ancient Cynicism: Rejecting Civilization and Returning to Nature by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

“Properly Basic” Belief in God: Believing in God without an Argument by Jamie B. Turner

Philosophy of Time: Time’s Arrow by Dan Peterson

W.D. Ross’s Ethics of “Prima Facie” Duties by Matthew Pianalto

Aristotle on Friendship: What Does It Take to Be a Good Friend? by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the Journey Out of Ignorance by Spencer Case

Epistemic Justification: What is Rational Belief? by Todd R. Long

The Doctrine of Double Effect: Do Intentions Matter to Ethics? by Gabriel Andrade

The Buddhist Theory of No-Self (Anātman/Anattā) by Daniel Weltman

Self-Knowledge: Knowing Your Own Mind by Benjamin Winokur

The Meaning of Life: What’s the Point? and Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? by Matthew Pianalto

The Philosophy of Humor: What Makes Something Funny? by Chris A. Kramer

Karl Marx’s Theory of History by Angus Taylor

Saving the Many or the Few: The Moral Relevance of Numbers by Theron Pummer

Philosophy of Space and Time: What is Space? and Philosophy of Space and Time: Are the Past and Future Real ? by Dan Peterson

What Is Misogyny? by Odelia Zuckerman and Clair Morrissey

Philosophy and Race: An Introduction to Philosophy of Race by Thomas Metcalf

“Can They Suffer?”: Bentham on our Obligations to Animals by Daniel Weltman

Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas”: Would You Walk Away? by Spencer Case

Indoctrination: What is it to Indoctrinate Someone? by Chris Ranalli

Agnosticism about God’s Existence by Sylwia Wilczewska

African American Existentialism: DuBois, Locke, Thurman, and King by Anthony Sean Neal

Conspiracy Theories by Jared Millson

Philosophical Inquiry in Childhood by Jana Mohr Lone

* New categories are added as the project expands.

Popular Essays

* This is a selection of some of our most popular essays.

Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” by Charles Miceli and Descartes’ Meditations by Marc Bobro

Marx’s Conception of Alienation by Dan Lowe

John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies

The Ethics of Abortion by Nathan Nobis

Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery by Dan Lowe

“God is Dead”: Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science : Comparing Philosophical and Scientific Understanding by Thomas Metcalf

Happiness: What is it to be Happy? by Kiki Berk

Pascal’s Wager: A Pragmatic Argument for Belief in God by Liz Jackson

The African Ethic of Ubuntu by Thaddeus Metz

New to philosophy?! Perhaps begin with these essays:

What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf,

Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker? by Carolina Flores,

Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf, and

Is it Wrong to Believe Without Sufficient Evidence? W.K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” by Spencer Case.

We have resources for students on How to Write a Philosophical Essay and How to Read Philosophy by the Editors of 1000-Word Philosophy .

A teaching units page has resources to help instructors develop course modules.

2023 and 2022 End of Year Reports are available here .

We have STICKERS! Want a free sticker or some stickers?? Let us know and we’ll send you some! (Offer only available for addresses in the US, unfortunately, due to postage costs.)

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook , Twitter / X , and Instagram and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com

The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.” –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture. –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think. –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel Lost Children Archive (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a good conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment. Tell Me How It Ends is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.” –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing Bad Feminist that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell. This Young Monster (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from Artforum , Dazed & Confused , and Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic, This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) · Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012) · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014) · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014) · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014) · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) · Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016) · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016) · Lindy West, Shrill (2016) · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016) · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016) · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016) · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016) · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017) · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017) · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017) · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017) · Joan Didion, South and West (2017) · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017) · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017) · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) · Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018) · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018) · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018) · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018) · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018) · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019) · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019) · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019) · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019) · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019) · Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019) · Robert A. Caro, Working (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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50 Essays by Samuel Cohen - Seventh Edition, 2023 from Macmillan Student Store

Psychology in Everyday Life

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50 Essays: A Portable Anthology is a bestselling value-priced reader because its virtues dont stop at the price. The book’s carefully chosen selections engage students and include both classic essays and high-interest, contemporary readings. The editorial apparatus is flexible and unobtrusive enough to support a variety of approaches to teaching composition. The seventh edition features new voices on culturally relevant topics as well as an enhanced documentation guide establishing the importance of conducting research and evaluating sources, and new pre-reading questions to guide students as they develop their skills as critical readers.

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Samuel Cohen (PhD, City University of New York) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri. He is the author of After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s , co-editor (with James Peacock) of The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on The Only Band that Matters , co-editor (with Lee Konstantinou) of The Legacy of David Foster Wallace , Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture , and has published in such journals as Novel , Clio , Twentieth-Century Literature , The Journal of Basic Writing, and Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. For Bedford/St. Martins, he is author of 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology and coauthor of Literature: The Human Experience .

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50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone. Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read Would Everybody Please Stop? is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food, Longthroat Memoirs is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails, Longthroat Memoirs explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as The Believer , The New Yorker , and Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience. Betwixt and Between is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In Look Alive Out There, whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview, Idiophone is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch . From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick , Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby

“With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul

“In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues, Shrewed is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber), Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God) by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask , edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

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What is an Anthology? Definition, Examples, & More

POSTED ON Dec 16, 2023

Written by Nicole Ahlering

What is an anthology? It’s one of those literary terms that sounds sophisticated, but its definition is simple. An anthology is a collection of written works gathered into a single publication.

It comes from the Greek words for “a collection of flowers”— how lovely is that? — because that’s how the Greeks envisioned a compilation of poems.

These days, an anthology can be more than solely a way to publish poetry , (although that’s a great use for it). It can also include other types of writing, like essays, transcripts, short stories, and more! We’ll talk about how to define an anthology, what typically goes in one, and everything else you need to know in this article. Let’s jump right in.

What is an anthology? This blog covers that and more…

Anthology definition .

One of the cool things about an anthology is that it can be so diverse. There’s no real common writing style across these books. An anthology might consist of essays , poems , or short stories, for example. Or it can feature a big mix of everything.

It might include work from just one author or multiple authors. Often, it’s a collage of voices and ideas.

That said, anthologies typically have some unifying element . It could be a certain theme, genre, cultural identity, era, or nearly anything else you can think of.

Because theme is a common throughline in anthologies, let’s explore that a little more.

Common themes in anthologies

A theme, or a central idea that unifies a piece of literature, is an excellent, intuitive way to organize an anthology.

If you’d like to find an anthology you’re interested in (or compile one of your own), here are a few literary themes you may consider:

The human experience . Here’s one we can all relate to. There’s a bounty of work reflecting on what it means to be mortal and the obstacles we endure.
Nature . In our age of technology, we’re more disconnected from nature than ever. A nature anthology can help us reconnect to our surroundings.
Travel, adventure, and exploration. None of us will manage to see the entire world in our lifetimes, but we can read and write about it.
Coming of age . Adolescence is an engaging, layered topic whether you’re in the midst of it or emerged from it long ago. It can be surprisingly moving to read diverse voices on growing up, regardless of your age.
Loss and grief. Much as we’d like to avoid it, none of us is exempt from anguish. Thankfully, mourning is made more bearable in the community, and reading from authors who have faced sorrow can be an excellent way to feel communion.

How long is a typical anthology?

There is no required length for an anthology. It can be brief or hundreds of pages long. It all depends, of course, on the number of works it contains and how long those works are.

How many pieces of work are in an anthology?

There isn’t a set number of pieces required for an anthology, either. The choice of how many to include will largely depend on the theme or focus of the anthology, the length of the pieces, the editor’s vision for the collection, and perhaps the publisher’s preferences.

To get an idea of the variation in anthology lengths, compare Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories , which is less than 150 pages, to The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose , which is nearly 900 pages!

Can an anthology have multiple authors?

Yes! In fact, it’s common for an anthology to have pieces from different writers. Often its goal is to compile diverse work serving a common theme or purpose. By featuring writers with unique voices and writing styles, the anthology editor adds dimension to a topic.

That said, you’ll also find anthologies featuring writing from just one author—typically one who has a vast body of work like Lydia Davis or Edgar Allen Poe .

Examples of anthologies

Whether you need inspiration for your own anthology or you simply want to read some, these are a few of the best:

The Best American Essays Series which compiles—you guessed it—the best essays written by Americans each year, according to the editor selected to compile them. 2023’s Edition is led by feminist writer and critic, Vivian Gornick.
The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry , edited by Christopher Burns, is a collection of beloved poetry classics that you’ll return to throughout the years.
The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles is not only a treat for fans but an example of how an anthology can include different works like stories, transcripts, and photographs.
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology , edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr is a new and highly-rated fiction anthology that will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you’re interested in authors who write short stories , this one’s for you.
The Moth Presents Series is a collection of anthologies presented by beloved podcast, The Moth. Each book, like Occasional Magic and All These Wonders , is an engrossing collection of essays, short stories, and more from familiar and brand-new voices.

There’s a nearly endless list of anthology genres , so if none of these appeal to you, we encourage you to do some research! We promise you’ll find one you love.

Want to publish your own anthology? What to know

Wondering where to publish poetry , essays, or short stories? An anthology (or anthology series) is a great option—especially for any short-form writing. Here are a few things to bear in mind as you compile your work:

Choose pieces that have a common theme, focus, or purpose so your anthology has a cohesive feel.
Make sure to select only your best works for the anthology. Quality over quantity is the rule of the day! Have someone else objectively read your pieces to help you determine which ones shine.
Consider working with a professional editor and/or proofreader to polish your work.
Use book writing software to make the process easier.

Ready to write a book , anthology, or otherwise? At Selfpublishing.com, we can help you through the process of writing and publishing your own volume from start to finish. Book a free call to get started, or claim your free book outline template below.

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The Best American Essays 2022 Paperback – 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.

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
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Read the best of everything in this year's Best American 2022 Series!

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 ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
#265 in American Fiction Anthologies
#703 in Essays (Books)
#1,990 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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River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation

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Most of the collections of translation essays I’ve come across, including those that were key to my development as a translator—such as The Craft of Translation , edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte—are centered around Western conventions. I was intrigued by Nuzhat Abbas’s vision of this new anthology as “a small vessel, an improvised container for critical and creative questions, for contemplation, for decolonial, antiracist, feminist, queer, and trans dissonance, refusal and rebellion, for care and community.” I questioned whether I should be writing this review, as I was on unfamiliar turf, only recognizing one of the contributors’ names—someone I personally knew through her work as the editor of Modern Poetry in Translation —but felt a bit more at ease upon reading the name of my publisher at Seagull Books, Naveen Kishore, in the acknowledgments section of the anthology. Indeed, it was Naveen who brought me halfway around the globe to meet with the students at the Seagull School of Publishing in Kolkata—a life-changing experience for me, who had never visited this part of the world.

Drawing on eleven feminist voices whose origins lie in such disparate geographies that include the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa, this anthology is a product of unsettled times, which, as Abbas states, include “the shifting conditions of an ongoing global pandemic, environmental catastrophes, growing fascism, and conflicts large and small, alongside the uncountable dead, the disabled, and the orphaned.” The contributors, broadly addressing why they translate, are a diverse mix of emerging and experienced translators working in an array of languages, including Arabic, Gujarati, Indonesian, Persian, Rukiga, Tamil, and Urdu. The backgrounds of the contributors are equally diverse, both among themselves and within themselves, such as Rwandan-born Lisa Ndejuru, who grew up in Germany and moved to Canada as a teen, and Suneela Mubayi, born in New York to a Jewish American mother and a Hindu Kashmiri father, then raised in both India and the United States.

The structure of each essay is as different from the others as each contributor. “The Meaning of a Song,” by Kenyan-born, Ugandan-raised Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, consists of a series of unsent letters written to her deceased poet-father and includes pictures from the family archives. “Elegiac Moods,” by Canadian Rahat Kurd, descended from a line of Kashmiri women, contains seven letters addressed to the late Kashmiri American poet and translator Agha Shahid Ali. Khairani Barokka’s “Apa Kabar, Penerjemah? How Are You, Translator?” alternates between Indonesian and its English translation. Saudi Arabian–born Nora Alkharashi’s “Translating Courageously” is framed around her work translating Haitian American Edwidge Danticat’s work into Arabic.

I was particularly drawn to the lyrical essays in this collection. For example, Palestinian-born Yasmine Haj’s “Rast” organizes her wisdom-infused essay into poetic prose segments about various aspects of translation. In the first section, titled “On Music,” Haj equates translation with survival:

A human’s first task is to translate. As infants, we breathe air and immediately translate. To survive, we translate. In different tones, an infant articulates hunger, distress, and fatigue. In turn, their caregivers experiment, juggle interpretations, understand, translate.

In Haj’s “On Landscape,” she discusses whether landscape might have been “the first shaper of how we translate,” describing how eons ago, a supercontinent that included today’s South America and Africa was torn apart by the effects of currents, creating what is now called the Atlantic Ocean. Integrating decolonial discourse, she muses: “If they hadn’t been separated, would translation have been needed to translate one to the other? Never mind colonization and the division of the two continents into Dutch, English, French, Italian, Portuguese . . .” Later in the essay, Haj evocatively describes the process of translating silence, making use of an astonishing but apt simile: “silence, too, is an ancient act of translation, musical in essence, magnificent in power. It amalgamates centuries of rhythm like black absorbs all colour. . . . Acts of translation must absorb before they can sing.”

In this anthology, deeply personal information serves to frame the concept of translation, such as Suneela Mubayi’s “The Temple Whore of Language.” Mubayi admits, almost with tongue in cheek, that the reason she became a translator was to avoid writing. She goes on to give a more serious answer to the question by equating translation with “un-settlement,” referencing her nonbinary sexuality—“I put the trans back into translation”—and her mixed ancestry. Humorously stating that “obviously, all translators need not be nonbinary,” she makes the case that her sexuality and mixed heritage might make her a more sensitive translator, asserting: “I exist on the margins of various opposing elements—masculine and feminine, white and non-white, and of languages and spaces that are both culturally hegemonic and non-hegemonic.” Indeed, there can be power in contradiction.

Abbas has compiled a unique anthology that attempts to make sense of personal and political trauma and offers the possibilities of a new approach to translation not based on Eurocentric translation theories. Seen through a feminist, decolonial lens, translation can be understood as un-settlement, as landscape, as memory, as self-discovery and even survival, but, most importantly, as a path that can lead to collective healing.

Nancy Naomi Carlson Walden University

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With a cover illustration by Edel Rodriguez, “Writing the Polycrisis” headlines the March/April 2024 issue of World Literature Today , showcasing contributions by nine writers, mainly from the Global South. Additional highlights include interviews, creative nonfiction, booklists, essays, and more! Plus a book review section brimming with the latest must-reads also enliven the issue, making it your latest passport to the best new reading from around the world.

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Writing the polycrisis: dispatches from a calamitous planet, in every issue, creative nonfiction, book reviews.

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Library Prizes

12 graduates awarded library prizes for best senior essays

Each year, the library invites Yale College seniors to submit their senior essays for consideration to win one of three prizes for excellence: the Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award, the Diane Kaplan Memorial Prize, and the Yale Library Map Prize. The winners are selected by librarians or faculty members, and the prizes are funded by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The prizewinners are each awarded a cash prize in the amount of $500 (honorable mention recipients receive $250), and all winners’ essays are published on EliScholar, Yale Library’s digital platform for scholarly publishing. As is the tradition, students receive their awards at their residential commencement ceremonies.

The Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

The Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award recognizes a student whose senior essay or capstone project substantially draws on national government information or intergovernmental organization (IGO) information, including documents or data. Yale Library has been a designated federal depository library since 1859.

The Applebaum award was presented to Henry H. Carroll , Davenport College, for the essay “Ship Shaping: How Congress and Industry Influenced U.S. Naval Acquisitions from 1933—1938.” Read Henry Carroll’s essay .

Honorable mention was awarded to Nina Grigg , Benjamin Franklin College, for the essay “Surveyor: Scratching for a Wild Moon.” Read Nina Grigg’s essay .

The Diane Kaplan Memorial Prize

The Diane Kaplan Memorial Prize recognizes prizewinning students’ excellent use of research materials from the library’s diverse collections and also the high quality of their writing.

Three students received the Diane Kaplan prize this year:

Leo Egger , Trumbull College, for the essay “‘Living Its Strange Life’: A Literary Biography of Margery Latimer from the Archives in 18 Scenes.” Read Leo Egger’s essay .

AJ Laird , Benjamin Franklin College, for the essay “Whaling Logbooks: Colonial Knowledge Acquisition in the Pacific World.” Read AJ Laird’s essay and visit the related exhibit in Sterling Memorial Library exhibition corridor.

Shira Minsk , Pauli Murray College, for the essay “Steady through Time: Ella Barksdale Brown and the Perception-Based Politics of Black Women’s Racial Uplift in 20th-Century America.” Read Shira Minsk’s essay .

The Library Map Prize

The Library Map Prize recognizes students whose senior essays or projects make use of one or more maps or charts in substantive ways. Students may either create the maps or refer to maps found online or in the library’s special collections.

This year the Map Prize was awarded to two seniors:

Lisa Dong , Pierson College, for the interactive StoryMap essay “So, Where Are Your Really From?: A Digital Humanities Repository Mapping ‘Home, Identity, and Belonging’ within the Intimacies of the Fuzhounese Experience.” View Lisa Dong’s web-based essay .

Nick McGowan , Pauli Murray College, for the essay “Rebirth: Investigating Industrial Gentrification and the Land Use Policy in Chicago’s West Loop.” Read Nick McGowan’s essay .

The Department of History Prizes

The library also stewards the funds for three American History prizes, selected by faculty members in the Department of History. This year, five prizes were awarded for best senior essays.

Julia Aerin Hornstein , Ezra Stiles College, won the Howard R. Lamar Prize for the essay “Charles ‘Minnie’ Dole: The Peak of Masculinity and the Frontier of Western Snow”; AJ Laird , Benjamin Franklin College, won a David M. Potter Prize for “Whaling Logbooks: Colonial Knowledge Acquisition in the Pacific World”; Sydney Zoehrer , Silliman College, won a David Morris Potter Prize for the essay “Adobe: Material Histories at a Crossroads in Marfa, Texas; Hilary B. Griggs , Branford College, won a Walter McClintock Prize for the essay “Does a Man’s Word or a Nation’s Word Ever Become Obsolete?’: Fighting the Floodwaters on the Fort Berthold Reservation”; Teanna Hart (Sicangu Lakota), Silliman College, won a Walter McClintock Prize for the essay “Reconciliation Is Not Enough: Looking and/as Speaking Back at Portrayals of the American Indian”; and Taylor Rose won the Frederick W. Beinecke Dissertation Prize for the essay “Battle Born: Mining, Militarization, and Native Lands in the Nevada Desert, 1860–1990.”

Read more about the three Library Prizes and other Undergraduate Student Prizes. Read more about the History prizes.

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Everyone Wants a Piece of Kafka, a Writer Who Refused to Be Claimed

A hundred years after Kafka’s death, people and nations are still fighting over his legacy.

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This illustration features a black-and-white photo of Franz Kafka from the waist up, in a heavy wool blazer, high-collared shirt and tie. The space where his face should be is cut out like a missing puzzle piece, with a partial portrait of Kafka himself peering out through the hole and the rest of the space filled by a swath of vivid green.

By Benjamin Balint

Benjamin Balint is the author of “Kafka’s Last Trial” and, most recently, “Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History,” winner of the National Jewish Book Award in biography.

In his novella “The Prague Orgy,” Philip Roth has a Czech writer say: “When I studied Kafka, the fate of his books in the hands of the Kafkologists seemed to me to be more grotesque than the fate of Josef K.” Just as Franz Kafka’s prose both demands and evades interpretation, something about his legacy has both solicited and resisted claims of ownership.

Despite his astonishing clairvoyance about the impersonal cruelty of the bureaucratic state and the profound alienation of contemporary life, Kafka could not have foreseen how many admirers would read and misread his enigmatic fictions after his death, nor how many would-be heirs would seek to appropriate him as their own in the century since.

Competing claims began to swirl almost as soon as Kafka died of tuberculosis, 100 years ago this June, a month short of his 41st birthday. Max Brod — close friend, betrayer of Kafka’s last instruction to burn his manuscripts, heavy-handed editor of his diaries and unfinished novels, and author of the first Kafka biography — depicted him as a modern-day “saint” whose stories and parables “are among the most typically Jewish documents of our time.”

Among other religious readers of the novels Brod published (“The Trial” in 1925, “The Castle” in 1926 and “Amerika” in 1927), Kafka’s first English translators, Edwin and Willa Muir, presented him as an allegorist of Christian grace. (In German, “Die Verwandlung,” the title of Kafka’s tale of Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis into an insect, also connotes “transfiguration.”)

As early as 1947, Edmund Wilson warned that all this deification threatened to “oversaturate and stupefy” Kafka’s readers. Still, the Kafka craze continued to swell. In the 1960s, existentialists interpreted Kafka as an angst-ridden precursor who stared into the abyss of absurdity and asked — as Josef K. does in the penultimate paragraph of “The Trial” — “Where was the Judge whom he had never seen?” Simone de Beauvoir said that Kafka “revealed to us our own problems, confronted by a world without God and where nonetheless our salvation was at stake.”

Psychoanalysts claimed the author of stories like “In the Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist” as a neurotic herald of the uncanny or a self-tortured “poet of shame and guilt” (as the subtitle of Saul Friedländer’s biography has it). Modernists adopted Kafka not as a patient to be diagnosed but as the writer who most acutely perceived the bewildering breakdown of received ideas in our society. “Had one to name the artist who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age that Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe bore to theirs,” W.H. Auden said, “Kafka is the first one would think of.”

Others pulled Kafka into this or that political cause, most bizarrely when he was fashioned into a weapon of the Cold War. In a speech in Moscow in 1962, Jean-Paul Sartre cautioned against the “militarization” of culture, likening Kafka to a “grenade in the library” or a cartload of dynamite shunted between East and West. “A true cultural competition,” Sartre said, “raises the following pacifist challenge: To whom, us or you, does Kafka belong; that is to say, who understands him best?”

Soviet critics enlisted Kafka as an ally of the dignified individual bravely clashing with the capitalist system, while anti-communist dissidents turned him into an adversary of the bureaucratic terror practiced by authoritarian regimes. In 1954, long before the writer’s name became a ubiquitous adjectival cliché, Arthur Koestler disparaged the Moscow show trials as “Kafka-esque.” Two years later, as Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising, the Marxist literary critic György Lukács was arrested in Budapest, held in a Romanian castle and deprived of the right to know the charges, much less to rebut them. “So Kafka was a realist after all!” he declared.

A more recent chapter in the story of Kafka’s contentious afterlife involves those who attempted to connect a national “we” to his name. Beginning in 2007, a nine-year custody battle was waged in Israeli courts over the manuscripts by Kafka that Brod had narrowly rescued from the Nazi occupation of Prague. The case could be read as a commentary on a single question: Does this writer — a member of a Jewish minority within a German-speaking minority within a Czech minority within a heterogeneous Austro-Hungarian Empire — belong to German literature or to the state that regards itself as the representative of Jews everywhere?

On one side was the National Library of Israel, which recruited Kafka as a Jewish writer, despite his ambivalence toward Zionism. Israel saw itself as the rightful home to the cultural products of diaspora, the appropriate ending place for a story begun elsewhere. On the other side, lawyers for the German Literature Archive in Marbach argued that Kafka’s manuscripts belonged in Germany because his language was German — “the purest German prose of the century,” Hannah Arendt said.

When I attended the Israeli Supreme Court hearing on the case in the summer of 2016, one thing seemed beyond doubt: Germany’s claim on a writer whose family was decimated in the Shoah had become entangled with the country’s attempt to overcome its shame. Perhaps some Germans hoped that the act of claiming Kafka — as a Jewish guardian of German prose, and as a Jew fortunate enough to die before he could fall victim to the Nazis — would serve that overcoming. Here lay a potent irony: The writer who raised self-condemnation to an art would be used as an instrument of self-exculpation, of effacing, rather than facing up to, the past. (The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the National Library .)

The Palestinian undergraduates with whom I read Kafka were not preoccupied with questions of cultural ownership. When we read “The Trial” in a course I taught at a Bard College program in East Jerusalem, the students were riveted from the opening line: “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”

One student compared the book to Mustafa Khalifa’s “ The Shell ,” a novel (published here in 2023) based on the author’s 13-year imprisonment without trial in Syria. Another found in Josef K.’s futile pursuit of justice a new vocabulary with which to express her family’s decades-long legal efforts to stave off eviction from the home they had lived in since the early 1950s, a two-bedroom apartment in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Since the property had belonged to a Jewish charitable trust before Israel’s creation in 1948, the state argued that ownership should revert to the charity’s trustees.

Like the trial over Kafka’s manuscripts, the family’s appeals would eventually be heard by the Supreme Court. “In ‘The Trial,’” my student said, “you can never obtain an acquittal. So also with us: We can only hope to postpone the eviction, to postpone, to postpone, to postpone.” For these young readers, Kafka conjured a world not surreal but superreal .

It struck me then that the readers who come closest to the essence of Kafka’s singular vision are those who recognize the irony of taking a proprietary attitude toward a writer so faithful to his own non-belonging, and so careful to set his characters — antagonists against authorities divine, political and paternal — in no particular time or place. In a letter to his fiancée Felice Bauer, Kafka writes of his “infinite yearning for independence and freedom in all things.” Despite his deep feeling for Yiddish theater and for the Hebrew language, that yearning unmoored him from any kind of collective belonging and untethered his imagination to sail beyond any national canon, “obedient,” in his words, “to its own laws of motion.”

We can only wonder whether the spectacle of a century’s warring over his artistic legacy would have amused this least possessive of writers. “Everything I possess is directed against me,” Kafka confessed to Brod, “and what is directed against me is no longer in my possession.”

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John S. Jacobs was a fugitive, an abolitionist — and the brother of the canonical author Harriet Jacobs. Now, his own fierce autobiography has re-emerged .

Don DeLillo’s fascination with terrorism, cults and mass culture’s weirder turns has given his work a prophetic air. Here are his essential books .

Jenny Erpenbeck’s “ Kairos ,” a novel about a torrid love affair in the final years of East Germany, won the International Booker Prize , the renowned award for fiction translated into English.

Kevin Kwan, the author of “Crazy Rich Asians,” left Singapore’s opulent, status-obsessed, upper crust when he was 11. He’s still writing about it .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

DC Pride 2024 Is a Tribute to Queer Belonging So Touching, It Moved Me to Tears

Warning: Potential SPOILERS for DC Pride 2024 #1

DC Pride 2024 #1 features moving stories that celebrate LGBTQ+ characters and creators, including an emotional piece by Phil Jimenez.
The best stories in the anthology focus on characters' search for belonging, incorporating history and personal connections.
The anthology highlights the importance of LGBTQ+ heroes and creators in superhero history, making it essential reading for fans.

Reading DC Comics' annual Pride special is an emotional event for me every year, but this year's DC Pride 2024 #1 had me holding back tears. This year's one-shot includes stories that will please every kind of fan — including those like me who want to celebrate DC's queer creators and history more than anything else.

Beyond telling fun stories about DC's roster of LGBTQ+ characters — new and historical both — DC Pride 2024 #1 includes a moving short story by the iconic writer/artist Phil Jimenez, proving once again that DC's Pride offerings aren't just about the characters but also about celebrating the history of queer creators who have touched DC through the decades — and who have been touched by DC's world in return.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, as Jimenez's story with artist Giulio Macaione concludes the 100-page one-shot. Before that, DC fans can travel the galaxy with our favorite characters and creators. We find ourselves in the furthest reaches of space with Poison Ivy and Janet-from-HR and the familiar streets of Metropolis' A-Town with Jon Kent and friends — all in search of a sense of belonging, a theme that unites each of these stories, up to and including Jimenez's.

DC Pride 2023 Is an Earnest Tribute to All Kinds of Queer Love (Review)

With a grab-bag of stories, essays, pin-ups, and more, DC Pride 2023#1 is the publisher's third Pride anthologyand its most meaningful yet.

DC Pride 2024 #1's Best Stories Embrace History (or Lack Thereof)

Dc's lgbtq+ characters search for belonging.

With this fourth installment in the Pride anthology "series," which began with 2021's DC Pride #1, DC's annual Pride one-shot is now an award-winning tradition, and one I know I'm not alone in eagerly anticipating every year. This year's anthology is loosely themed around the idea of "travel," but the best moments in these stories instead embrace travel as a metaphor for something far greater: a search for belonging that is often a shared experience within queer communities.

Among those best moments — and there's a "best" to be found in every story here, even those that don't stand among my personal favorites — the best-of-the-best latch on to even the smallest nuggets of these characters' histories to tell stories about finding belonging in unexpected places, even when those places are unexpectedly familiar. The two strongest pieces of fiction in DC Pride 2024 are "Hello, Spaceboy" by Al Ewing and Stephen Byrne and "The Rivers and Lakes that You're Used To" by Ngozi Ukazu , and not only because they're by beloved creators who are making their mark on the DCU for the first time.

Ewing, Byrne, and Ukazu Offer Stand-Out Short Stories

Ewing and Byrne's "Hello, Spaceboy" revamps the '90s version of Starman for the 2020s — a story notable both for Ewing's DC debut and for how Mikaal Tomas' Starman is one of DC's earliest openly gay heroes . This story introduces Mikaal to a new generation of readers — myself included — just as it introduces Mikaal to a new and unexpected relationship with one of his rivals. Ukazu's story, on the other hand, stars DC's newest young Aquaman, Jackson Hyde, and the complex hero of the Fourth World, Orion.

Ngozi Ukazu, the best-selling author of the webcomic-turned-graphic-novel Check, Please! from First Second, has more to say about the Fourth World: check out Ukazu's new YA graphic novel, Barda , available June 4th from DC Comics.

This Aquaman/Orion team-up is made all the more compelling by how the story acknowledges Jackson's unfamiliarity with Orion and New Genesis — but also his willingness to meet and understand new people, finding belonging only through the process of experiencing something and someone new. I'll always love character-focused stories above all else, and the best of these stories often show character relationships in-progress — like Circuit Breaker struggling to remember who's who in the Flash Family in "Phantom Rodeo" by Calvin Kasulke and Len Gogou.

Phil Jimenez's Autobiographical DC Pride Story Is an Achievement (and a Tear-Jerker)

Dc's spotlighting of queer creators is the best part of dc pride.

But the best-of-the-best in DC Pride 2024 #1 is absolutely undeniable: "Spaces" by Phil Jimenez and Giulio Macaione. "Spaces" is an autobiographical story about Jimenez's childhood and adult connection to Wonder Woman , the Amazons, and the idea of Paradise Island. Jimenez, known especially for his work on Wonder Woman , is one of the most prominent out creators working in superhero comics, and this story is both a testament and a love letter to the fictional worlds that make queer children (and adults, for that matter) feel like anything is possible — including being ourselves.

Each iteration of DC Pride takes essential time to honor not only its extremely fictional characters and stories, but to honor the people who have made those characters and stories possible.

I won't lie: the story made me cry. I'm a crier; I wouldn't be able to count the number of superhero comics that have had me clutching my tissue box over the years. But Jimenez and Macaione's story is a crystalline example of why the DC Pride celebration — including the annual anthology — matters , and why it has never felt like an empty "celebration" designed to appease queer fans. Like Kevin Conroy's story from DC Pride 2022 and last year's extensive tribute to trans icon and Doom Patrol writer Rachel Pollack, DC editorial continues to spotlight real queer stories — of both struggle and triumph — from real queer people who have made major marks on our favorite characters.

DC's Rachel Pollack tribute continues in this year's second Pride special, DC Pride: A Celebration of Rachel Pollack , available June 4th from DC Comics.

"Spaces" may be muted in tone and almost philosophical in its thinking, but by standing in stark contrast to the brightly-colored superhero fiction that comes before it, it practically sparkles — and not because baby Phil's eyes quite literally shine in the first panel. Each iteration of DC Pride takes essential time to honor not only its extremely fictional characters and stories, but to honor the people who have made those characters and stories possible, most especially in the decades before the industry — and world — would accept such a public celebration.

Batmans Kevin Conroy Shares Heartfelt Message Over DC Pride Story

Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy shared a touching message in response to the ongoing support he received following his recent story.

DC Pride 2024 #1 Insists that LGBTQ+ Stories Have Always Mattered

Dc pride variant covers available throughout june.

Some may see the critic's job as telling an audience whether the subject is "good" or "bad," whether it's worth the audience's time and money. I disagree, and I have disagreed for as long as I've been writing: my job as a critic is to tell you whether my subject matters, and why, and how. As a regular-old DC fan, one who's loved these characters since childhood, I have my favorite and not-so-favorite stories in DC Pride 2024 #1, and I couldn't necessarily say this is my favorite of the four anthologies.

There are perhaps one too many moments where queer characters are lumped together as "friends" without having any real reason to know each other — an admittedly personal pet peeve in continuity-based storytelling. I love seeing my newer favorites l ike the magic-user Xanthe and my more obscure favorites like the Ray, but I have a lot of trouble understanding how they could have come to know the other characters in the stories where they appear. I don't want to be told characters are friends; I want to see those friendships grow in real, organic time, even in limited page space. Such is the joy of interconnected storytelling.

But as a critic — one with inescapable subjectivity, especially as a queer reader — I still believe wholeheartedly that this anthology matters, and it matters deeply . The stories in DC Pride 2024 #1 are in constant search for belonging: the characters find their belonging within each other and themselves, the creators find belonging within their work, and the readers — or, rather, this reader — find belonging in the utter breadth of possibility within the DC Universe and superhero fiction more broadly, from obscure '90s heroes to the Fourth World to Paradise Island and far beyond.

DC Pride 2024 #1 Is a Worthy Addition to the Award-Winning Anthology Series

Now to wait until next year....

Why does DC Pride matter? Because it makes public what has, in decades past, been a private truth: queer heroes are an important, essential part of superhero history, both on the page and in the metaphorical bullpen. That DC Pride 2024 #1, along with the anthologies before it, makes space for that history marks it as important reading; that it also makes space for the future of superhero storytelling and its storytellers, too, marks it as essential reading for fans of all kinds.

There's room for everyone to belong in DC's latest Pride special, readers most of all. This one-shot is a genuinely worthy addition to what's fast becoming one of the publisher's most important traditions. And if you're anything like me, you'll want to have a few tissues on hand when you pick up DC Pride 2024 #1 , available now from DC Comics.

DC Pride 2024 Is a Tribute to Queer Belonging So Touching, It Moved Me to Tears

The 15 Best Horror Anthology Movies, Ranked According to Rotten Tomatoes

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Horror anthology films have existed since the era of silent movies, offering a collection of at least three short horror films, each with a unique premise and a different cast. While some horror movies run out of steam as they stretch their story to 90 minutes, anthology shorts have the benefit of wrapping things up in a taut 20–30 minutes. The concept owes much to short story books. Stephen King , in particular, has published many short story collections that have been adapted into horror anthology movies. He even provided the screenplay for the horror anthology Creepshow .

The key to making a great anthology is achieving a consistent level of quality across all the entries , as many anthologies prove to be uneven as some stories outshine others. The best anthology horror movies do not have this problem, as they deliver thrills and chills throughout every part. With the best anthology TV series like Black Mirror getting plenty of attention, anthologies have found a new home on streaming services and more horror films are being produced in the genre than ever before.

15 'Cat's Eye' (1985)

Rotten tomatoes score: 69%.

Cat's Eye is a gripping anthology film directed by Lewis Teague and penned by the master of horror, King. The movie interlaces three macabre tales with a stray cat as the connecting thread. In "Quitters, Inc." James Woods plays Morrison, a smoker desperate to quit. But the program he joins, run by the creepy Dr. Donatti ( Alan King ), is even worse than cigarettes! Meanwhile, "The Ledge" features a high-stakes game where Kenneth McMillan 's Cressner puts Robert Hays ' Norris in a life-or-death situation by making him navigate a dangerous ledge on a skyscraper.

The final story, "General," stars a young Drew Barrymore as Amanda, a girl menaced by a malevolent troll. While the special effects in this horror film, created by Jeff Jarvis , are understated, they pack a punch. This focus on subtlety allows primal fears like pain, heights, and suffocation to take center stage. The suspenseful storytelling, further made enjoyable by the cleverly intertwined cat's journey , makes it a must-see for horror fans.

Rent on Amazon

14 'ABCs of Death 2' (2014)

Rotten tomatoes score: 73%.

Based on the concept that each entry must relate to a letter of the alphabet, ABCs of Death 2 features 26 short horror films directed by 26 different filmmakers. There is no wraparound story, so audiences can expect to experience tonal whiplash as the films leap between grotesque, laugh-out-loud funny, and disturbing.

As well as featuring famous horror names such as Larry Fessenden , Jen and Sylvia Soska , and Vincenzo Natali , the horror anthology also invited amateur filmmakers to submit their films for the letter M with the winner appearing in the film. While some shorts are weaker than others, the overall package makes for a more consistent and enjoyable watch when compared to its predecessor .

ABCs of Death 2

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13 'Southbound' (2015)

Rotten tomatoes score: 81%.

Produced by Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting fame, Southbound is an underrated horror anthology that tells five tales all centered around the same stretch of highway in the US. There is a prevailing theory that the characters are stuck in purgatory, as they face scenarios that include evil spirits, shady old people, and masked intruders.

Having the stories directly lead into each other, rather than having a wraparound segment, allows the film to avoid the massive tonal shifts that some anthologies suffer from. Southbound features segments by filmmakers who have become some of the brightest names in horror going forward , such as Radio Silence (the two latest Scream movies) and David Bruckner (the recent Hellraiser reboot).

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12 'Scare Package' (2019)

Both a loving tribute to anthology horror movies and horror in general, Scare Package revolves around Chad, a horror fan who operates his own struggling video store. Using this setting as the wraparound segment, the stories are presented as tales told by Chad to the customers and tapes that are on display.

Created by Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns , Scare Package was seen as an opportunity to collaborate with a group of independent filmmakers who had yet to break out in the scene and pay homage to the genre they love while subverting some of its most popular tropes. It is a love letter to horror with its practical effects and familiar monsters that evoke 80s nostalgia. It also masterfully blends humor and horror, offering a refreshing twist on anthology films.

Watch on Shudder

11 'Trick 'r Treat' (2007)

One of the best Halloween-themed movies , Trick 'r Treat suffered numerous delays and a late move to straight-to-DVD for its original release. The film finally received its first-ever theatrical run last October, owing to its enduring popularity over the years.

Unique in that the whole film is directed by one person ( Michael Dougherty ), Trick 'r Treat follows four interwoven stories that all occur in the same town on Halloween night.

Starring Anna Paquin and Brian Cox , the segments feature the likes of werewolves, serial killers, and the murderous ghosts of dead children . The film's mascot, Sam, a little trick-or-treater wearing orange pajamas and a sack over his head, continues to be a popular horror icon.

Trick 'r Treat

10 'a christmas horror story' (2015), rotten tomatoes score: 83%.

Taking the anthology horror format and moving it to Christmas Eve, A Christmas Horror Story is a surprising success. Framed around a radio DJ ( William Shatner ) telling spooky stories on the air, all four segments focus on the supernatural. The highlight is the last story, which focuses on Santa Claus fighting zombies at the North Pole.

Not boasting any big-name directors or actors aside from Shatner, A Christmas Horror Story gets by on its concept alone and the execution makes for an enjoyable watch . Shatner's "Dangerous Dan" is the charismatic voice that binds the film with his chilling narration that adds a layer of charm and suspense to each story. While the limited budget is noticeable at times, its commitment to the ridiculous stories it tells makes for one of the better Christmas-set horror movies in recent years.

A Christmas Horror Story

9 'three... extremes' (2004).

A collaboration between three of East Asia's most famous directors, Three... Extremes features the work of Fruit Chan from Hong Kong, South Korea's acclaimed auteur Park Chan-wook ( Oldboy ), and Japanese gonzo master Takashi Miike . The segments tell disturbing stories that involve repulsive dumplings that grant the gift of youth, a sadistic extra that holds a director and his family hostage, and a novelist plagued by nightmares of her past as a circus performer.

It all makes for one of the best horror anthologies that is an essential watch for fans of body horror. Each segment offers a unique exploration of human depravity and the monstrous potential within. The directors bravely confront taboos with unrelenting savagery, leaving viewers unsettled.

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8 'Ghost Stories' (2017)

Rotten tomatoes score: 85%.

An anthology from England, Ghost Stories follows Philip Goodman, a television presenter who runs a show dedicated to debunking supernatural events. The film follows him as meets with three different people, each with their own story to share with the skeptic. Martin Freeman stars as one of the storytellers, and it is a treat to see the popular actor delve into darker territory.

Since the movie follows one character as he investigates the different tales, Ghost Stories is able to keep a consistent tone throughout its runtime while building to a well-developed finale. While it can be unnerving at times, the screenplay offers some humor to culminate in an enjoyable watch . The actors, particularly Freeman and Andy Nyman , deliver performances so convincing they make the film seem real. This believable setting makes the supernatural elements all the more terrifying, leaving a lasting sense of unease.

7 'Black Sabbath' (1963)

Rotten tomatoes score: 88%.

Featuring three tales directed by the master of Italian horror, Maria Bava , Black Sabbath is an entertaining throwback to horror in the early 60s . The stories include a call-girl who is terrorized by a series of disturbing phone calls, a family of vampire hunters, and a nurse who grapples with the idea of stealing from the dead.

The anthology explores different facets of fear, from the supernatural wrath of vengeful spirits to the unsettling depths of psychological horror. Black Sabbath 's influence stretches beyond the horror genre , as the legendary heavy metal band fronted by Ozzy Osbourne took their name from the film. Black Sabbath was also a major influence on Pulp Fiction , with its short story structure causing Quentin Tarantino to try and replicate it within the crime genre. The iconic presence of Boris Karloff further cements its status as a classic.

Black Sabbath

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6 'Tales from the Crypt' (1972)

Rotten tomatoes score: 90%.

Based on a series of comic books, Tales from the Crypt remains one of the most popular horror anthologies. The original film follows tourists who encounter the infamous Crypt Keeper while on a tour through some catacombs. The Crypt Keeper shows each one their eventual death, resulting in the five stories that follow.

The film's popularity led to its revival as a television series on HBO that ran for seven seasons in the 1990s . It retained the element of the Crypt Keeper, who served as the narrator and introduced each episode's short stories of the macabre. This series proved to be even more popular than the film and features guest appearances from A-listers including Arnold Schwarzenegger , Whoopi Goldberg , and Brad Pitt .

5 'V/H/S/94' (2021)

Rotten tomatoes score: 91%.

The longest-running series of horror anthology films, V/H/S/94 is the fourth entry in the franchise that began in 2012. Transporting the series to 1994, five directors tell stories that feature terrorist organizations, mad scientists, supernatural occurrences at a wake, and a rat-like creature that lurks in a city's storm drains.

This movie is like a collection of scary stories filmed on old videotapes, which adds to the scariness. There's also a wraparound that ties everything together throughout the movie, so viewers don't fully get lost. Purchased by Shudder and screened as an original film, the horror-focused streamer claims the movie had the highest viewership numbers on the service at launch. A fifth entry, V/H/S/99 , followed in 2022.

4 'The House That Dripped Blood' (1971)

Rotten tomatoes score: 92%.

Framed around the story of a police inspector investigating disappearances that occurred at a seemingly haunted house, The House That Dripped Blood tells each of these cases as a short story. It proves for an inventive wraparound story as each deadly tale adds to the house's mystery. This horror movie has four scary tales, including "Method for Murder," which is about a writer whose pretend killer comes to life, and "Waxworks," which sees a man haunted by a creepy wax figure of his lost love.

While it initially received mixed reviews, The House That Dripped Blood has been re-evaluated in recent years to be seen as a classic within the horror anthology genre . It also features the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee , who would later be involved in mega franchises Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings respectively.

The House That Dripped Blood

3 'trilogy of terror' (1975).

Putting the fear of dolls in people 13 years before Child's Play , Trilogy of Terror stars Karen Black as different characters in three separate stories, which feature a dark relationship between a teacher and her student, twisted twin sisters, and the aforementioned killer doll as it attacks a woman alone in her home.

While the first two segments are mostly forgettable, the third titled 'Amelia' proved infamous enough that it helped the made-for-television film achieve cult classic status . The evil Zuni doll featured remains one of the most terrifying dolls in horror , and the film began Black's long association with the horror genre, including the 1976 film Burnt Offerings and Alfred Hitchcock 's Family Plot .

Trilogy of Terror

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2 'Dead of Night' (1945)

Rotten tomatoes score: 93%.

One of the earliest instances of a horror anthology, Dead of Night follows a group of strangers who have all been invited to the home of a man they have never met. As a way to pass the time, they each tell stories that feature strange events, with the most famous involving a ventriloquist's dummy that comes to life.

Horror movies were banned in Britain during the 1940s due to World War II, but Dead of Night managed to slip through the cracks due to its status as a horror-comedy . Its structure of a wraparound story featuring several smaller tales would go on to greatly influence the anthology format going forward, including Tales of the Crypt and long-running The Twilight Zone .

1 'The Mortuary Collection' (2019)

Rotten tomatoes score: 96%.

When drifter Sam ( Caitlin Custer ) arrives at a small town named Raven's End, she applies to work at the local mortuary. There she meets the mortician Montgomery Dark ( Clancy Brown ), who regales Sam with tales of those who have died in Raven's End, each presented as its own short story.

A recent horror hit, The Mortuary Collection works due to the strength of its stories, maintaining a consistent level of quality that many anthologies lack. The terrifying horror movie is praised for its sets and costumes, dark jokes, and creepy stories . Brown is always great, and his role as Dark is reliably entertaining as he appears in-between each segment as the charming and creepy undertaker, making this a must-watch for horror fans.

The Mortuary Collection

NEXT: The Best Anthology TV Series, Ranked According To Rotten Tomatoes

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The Most Anthologized Essays of the Last 25 Years
Sojourner Truth. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women," Terry Tempest Williams. The Full List. (all essays by writers with at least one duplication or three disparate essays anthologized) "The Great American Desert," Edward Abbey. "The Cowboy and his Cow," Edward Abbey. "Havasu," Edward Abbey. "Superman and Me," Sherman Alexie.
The Best Anthologies (So Far) to Read This Year
This anthology of essays from Catapult's online magazine contains work by 30 contributors, including Bassey Ikpi, Bryan Washington, Callum Angus, Destiny O. Birdsong, Eloghosa Osunde, Forsyth Harmon, and A.E. Osworth, among other fantastic writers. These pieces explore the body in all of its endlessly complex existences — stories of the ...
100 Must-Read Essay Collections
The Art of the Personal Essay — anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. 6. Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay. 7. The Best American Essays of the Century — anthology, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. 8. The Best American Essays series — published every year, series edited by Robert Atwan. 9. Book of Days — Emily Fox Gordon.
1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
Welcome to 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, an ever-growing set of over 180 original 1000-word essays on philosophical questions, theories, figures, and arguments. We publish new essays frequently, so please check back for updates, follow us on Facebook, Twitter / X, and Instagram, and subscribe by email on this page to receive ...
The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade ‹ Literary Hub
The 10 Best Memoirs of the Decade. The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction. of the Decade. Aleksandar Hemon Best of the Decade Charlie Fox Edwidge Danticat Elena Passarello Elif Batuman Esme Weijun Wang essay collections essays Eula Biss Hilton Als John Jeremiah Sullivan Oliver Sacks Rebecca Solnit Rivka Galchen Robin Wall Kimmerer Ross Gay Roxane Gay ...
50 Essays: A Portable Anthology 3rd Edition
50 Essays: A Portable Anthology is the best-selling value-priced reader in the country because its virtues don't stop at the price. Its carefully chosen selections include enough classic essays to reassure instructors, and enough high-interest and high-quality contemporary readings to keep things lively and relevant for students. The editorial ...
Read Harder 2018: An Essay Anthology
Another general anthology I recommend is In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind. Gutkind is the editor of a major journal of narrative nonfiction, and this book pulls together 25 of the best essays published in that journal over the last 15 years or so.
The Best American Essays
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 HarperCollins. 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 ...
Anthology Essay Books
avg rating 4.09 — 26,214 ratings — published 1993. Want to Read. Rate this book. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Books shelved as anthology-essay: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, They Can't Kill Us Until The...
What Is an Anthology?: 4 Notable Examples of Anthologies
Anthologies stretch across themes, types of literary output, and storytelling mediums. Here are four notable anthologies: 1. Anthologia Graeca: This Ancient Greek collection of writings is an early example of the propensity to gather together the work of various authors. This collection of literary works brings together an assortment of things ...
The Best American Essays 2019 by Robert Atwan
From lost languages and extinct species to life-affirming cosmologies and literary myths that offer cold comfort, the personal and the public collide in The Best American Essays 2019. This searching, necessary collection grapples with what has preoccupied us in the past year—sexual politics, race, violence, invasive technologies—and yet, in ...
The Best American Essays 2018
The Pulitzer-Prize winning and Guggenheim-honored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing "the fierce style of street reading and the formal tradition of critical inquiry, reads culture, race, and gender" (New York Times) to the task. "The essay, like love, like life, is indefinable, but you know an essay when you see it, and you know a ...
50 Essays, 7th Edition
50 Essays: A Portable Anthology is a bestselling value-priced reader because its virtues dont stop at the price. The book's carefully chosen selections engage students and include both classic essays and high-interest, contemporary readings. The editorial apparatus is flexible and unobtrusive enough to support a variety of approaches to ...
50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections
All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers by Alana Massey ... "All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice ...
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to
For more than four hundred years, the personal essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant of all literary forms. Distinguished from the detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward candor and self-disclosure, the personal essay seizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities, fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love and ...
Best Anthologies (1060 books)
An anthology is a work of short stories, poems or essays featuring different authors. What are your favorites? ... Tags: anthologies, anthology, best, fiction, literature, poems, poetry, short-stories, stories. Like. Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.
What is an Anthology? Definition, Examples, & More
Whether you need inspiration for your own anthology or you simply want to read some, these are a few of the best: The Best American Essays Series which compiles—you guessed it—the best essays written by Americans each year, according to the editor selected to compile them. 2023's Edition is led by feminist writer and critic, Vivian Gornick.
The Best American Essays 2022 Paperback
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 ...
What is the very best essay anthology? : r/books
Besides selecting an anthology based on an author, you can pick one based on topics. If you follow my proclivity for DFW type essays, then check out The New Kings of Nonfiction published by Ira Glass. It seems that you might like essays with an edge of social critique. Picking up a Malcolm X or Cornel West anthology might give you the thrills ...
Best essay anthology to get better at writing essays?
The art of the personal essay by Philip Lopate. Quick Takes by Elizabeth Penfield. Prose Models by Gerald Levin. The Compact Reader by Jane Aaron. True Tales of American Life by Paul Auster. Essay do EB White. Best American Essays. The Norton Reader. The Compact Essay by Donald Hall.
River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation
Toronto. Trace Press. 2023. 223 pages. Most of the collections of translation essays I've come across, including those that were key to my development as a translator—such as The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte—are centered around Western conventions.I was intrigued by Nuzhat Abbas's vision of this new anthology as "a small vessel, an improvised ...
12 graduates awarded library prizes for best senior essays
The Applebaum award was presented to Henry H. Carroll, Davenport College, for the essay "Ship Shaping: How Congress and Industry Influenced U.S. Naval Acquisitions from 1933—1938." Read Henry Carroll's essay. Honorable mention was awarded to Nina Grigg, Benjamin Franklin College, for the essay "Surveyor: Scratching for a Wild Moon."
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Good Material, by Dolly Alderton. Alderton's novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue ...
Best Philosophy Anthologies & Readers (6 books)
Just read these readers, because they put together the best, and gives you a broad and deep view of things, without too much intensity and stress. flag. All Votes Add Books To This List. 1. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology. by. Robert E. Goodin (Editor) 3.71 avg rating — 49 ratings. score: 100 , and 1 person voted.
Roger Deakins & Denis Villeneuve: Why This Is Their Best Shot
#rogerdeakins #denisvilleneuve #videoessay In this video we examine how Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins utilize insert shots to convey tension, mood, and an uneasy feeling in their films. We ...
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A hundred years after Kafka's death, people and nations are still fighting over his legacy. By Benjamin Balint Benjamin Balint is the author of "Kafka's Last Trial" and, most recently ...
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The best stories in the anthology focus on characters' search for belonging, incorporating history and personal connections. ... essays, pin-ups, and more, DC Pride 2023#1 is the publisher's third ...
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Cat's Eye is a gripping anthology film directed by Lewis Teague and penned by the master of horror, King. The movie interlaces three macabre tales with a stray cat as the connecting thread. In ...
The Virginia Woolf Reader: An Anthology of Her Best Sho…
This is a great introduction to the writings of Virginia Woolf. It spans her oeuvre with selected short stories and essays; there are also excerpts from several novels, her diary and letters, and her autobiographical writings. Especially welcome is a twenty-page long excerpt from her famous essay A Room of One's Own.