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The Best American Essays 2023

Series: Best American
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( 421 ratings, 84 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Best American Essays 2023, guest edited by Vivian Gornick, offers a compelling collection of twenty-one essays that celebrate the personal essay's rich tradition by focusing on lived experience. These provocative and honest pieces reveal the authors' candid observations amid contemporary challenges, from an inmate seeking purpose in prison, a doctor facing life’s uncertainties, to a widow yearning for more time with her late husband. Together, these narratives illuminate the resilience of the human spirit in difficult times.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This anthology is ideal for readers interested in arts and culture, personal narratives, and contemporary social issues. It suits those who appreciate literary essays that blend journalistic insight with emotional depth, reflecting on individual and collective human experiences.

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

Vivian Gornick, renowned essayist and celebrated feminist writer, selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honourable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.

From an inmate struggling to find purpose during his prison sentence to a doctor coping with the unpredictable nature of her patient, to a widow wishing for just a little more time with her late husband, these narratives—and the others featured in this anthology—celebrate the endurance of the human spirit.

The Best American Essays 2023 includes Ciara Alfaro, Jillian Barnet, Sylvie Baumgartel, Eric Borsuk, Chris Dennis, Xujun Eberlein, Sandra Hager Eliason, George Estreich, Merrill Joan Gerber, Debra Gwartney, Edward Hoagland, Laura Kipnis, Phillip Lopate, Celeste Marcus, Sam Meekings, Sigrid Nunez, Kathryn Schulz, Anthony Siegel, Scott Spencer, Angelique Stevens, and David Treuer.

Series: Best American

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  • The Best American Essays 2023
    In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honourable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and...
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  • The Best American Food Writing 2022
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  • The Best American Short Stories 2023
    “Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man...
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  • The Best American Short Stories 2022
    A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor. Andrew Sean Greer, “an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humour with sharp poignancy” (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. The Best American Short Stories...
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  • The Best American Essays 2022
    A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee. Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. The Best American Essays 2022 showcases a diverse range of voices and perspectives, offering readers a thought-provoking journey through...
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  • The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

“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

“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

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780063288843

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 07 December 2023

Country: United States

Imprint: HarperCollins

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 210.0mm

Weight: 236g

Pages: 288

About the Author

VIVIAN GORNICK is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachments-ranked the best memoir of the last fifty years by the New York Times-The Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader, as well as the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story. ROBERT ATWAN has been the series editor of The Best American Essays since its inception in 1986. He has edited numerous literary anthologies and written essays and reviews for periodicals nationwide.

Also by Robert Atwan

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  • The Best American Essays 2022
    A collection of the year’s best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee. Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. The Best American Essays 2022 showcases a diverse range of voices and perspectives, offering readers a thought-provoking journey through...
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Also by Vivian Gornick

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  • The Romance of American Communism
    “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now...
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  • Taking A Long Look
    For nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick’s essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics, and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, All That is Given illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick’s work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what...
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  • Fierce Attachments
    Vivian Gornick's relationship with her mother is difficult. At the age of forty-five, she regularly meets her mother for strolls along the streets of Manhattan. Occasionally they'll hit a pleasant stride—fondly recalling a shared nostalgia or chuckling over a mutual disgust—but most often their walks are tinged with contempt, irritation, and rages so white hot her mother will stop strangers...
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  • Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader
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