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3.5 

The Best American Essays 2023

By Vivian Gornick & Robert Atwan
The Best American Essays 2023 by Vivian Gornick & Robert Atwan digital book - Fable

Publisher 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 honorable 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 • David Treuer

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The Best American Essays 2023 Reviews

3.5
“I feel like I write the same thing every year when it comes to these collections.. some essays I really enjoyed, and some left less of an impact on me. Always worth a read, though, and I will continue to read this collection every year. It's always subjective, but it's interesting to see what essays are selected and to get different perspectives. Also, no opinion on the cover. {owned, paperback}”
“While a few essays in The Best American Essays 2023 truly stood out as stellar, the majority felt like a slog to get through. The editor’s selections clearly cater to a specific taste, which I can understand some readers appreciating—but unfortunately, they didn’t resonate with me. I kept pushing through, stubbornly hoping the next essay would redeem the collection, but ultimately, it fell short of my expectations.”

About Vivian Gornick

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 TimesThe 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.

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