Winner, 2025 Firecracker Awards Winner in Creative Nonfiction, given by the Community of Literary Magazines and PressesRaised in a rural Oregon town plagued by poverty, the artist and writer Jaydra Johnson excelled in school and chased upward mobility, desperate to escape the adversity that she saw as her inheritance—and the certainty that she grew up as trash. Johnson’s powerful memoir, Low—selected by acclaimed writer Maggie Nelson as the winner ...

As Heard on NPR's This American Life: The New York Times bestselling book that celebrates ordinary delights in the world around us by one of America's most original and observant writers and the author of Inciting Joy, award-winning poet Ross Gay. Pre-order The Book of (More) Delights now, too!“Ross Gay’s eye lands upon wonder at every turn, bolstering my belief in the countless small miracles that surround us.” —Tracy K....

**From New York Times bestselling author Ross Gay comes an intimate and electrifying collection of essays about the joy that comes from connection.“Brilliant. Inciting Joy is a book that will break your heart.” —Ada Limón, US poet laureate“A gift that’s meant to be shared.” —The Washington Post“It’s impossible to read [these essays] without feeling a shift in your awareness of joy and its unexpected possibilities.” ―The Boston Globe

From bestselling author of The Book of Delights and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us.In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, fro...

The National Book Award–winning author compiles a "thought-provoking volume" of essays by Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver Sacks, Jaquira Diaz and others ( Publishers Weekly).As Jonathan Franzen writes in his introduction, his main criterion for selecting The Best American Essays 2016 "was whether an author had taken a risk." The resulting volume showcases authorial risk in a variety of forms, from championing an unpopular opinion to the possibility of r...

**A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2024Raised with hoarding and compulsive shopping, Emily Mester is caught in between. What happens when consumption begins to consume you back?**In a series of deeply personal essays, Mester explores how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a c...

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 KIRKUS NON-FICTION PRIZEA transformative memoir that reimagines the conventions of love and posits a radical vision for healing.In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America.Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocat...

'The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,' Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us wha...

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970...

Many of us have tried to call a halt to our spending at one time or another. But what if we decided not to buy anything for a whole year? Obviously, we would need necessities like food and soap, but how would be manage without new clothes, treats, entertainment?Funny, smart and self-deprecating, Not Buying It is a close look at our society's obsession with shopping and the cold turkey confession of a woman we can all identify with -- someone who can't live without French r...

Finally available in the United States, a singular story collection that Time Out declared "unsettlingly brilliant"Astudent's suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd—and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all—or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told i...

The acclaimed author of Pulphead collects "21 of the year's most urgent and at times painfully truthful pieces of nonfiction published in the U.S." ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).In our age of trigger warnings and jeopardized free expression, The Best American Essays 2014 does not shy away from shocking extremes, ambiguities, or dualities. As guest editor John Jeremiah Sullivan notes, the essay assumes many two-sided forms, and thes...