Mary Oliver introduces the 2009 volume, not surprisingly, by talking about what an essay is. She turns to Emerson, her favorite essayist, ...

The surprise? That I single out the male authors. That I count twenty authors total, thirteen men. That my distaste is palpable. Find them s...

What do I remember best from being in Best American Essays for the first time, in 1998? This: Back then the back cover of the ann...

Reading Charles Baxter’s “What Happens in Hell,” I find myself continually impressed by each sentence’s ability to do two things at once. T...

Just got my hands on a copy today. Haven't had a chance to read through it yet (except for Robert Atwan's foreword, which is actuall...

I'm about halfway through this year's Best American Essays , so maybe this is unfair of me to say, but so far the individual essays ...

I haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but figured I'd post the Table of Contents here, as its nearly impossible to find any...