HeyJaredBest American Essays Newsletter
A digital newsletter featuring updates about the Best American Essays series, essays about the essay, interviews, reviews, and more.
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- Sep 30, 2026
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Day 2: From the Introduction (opens the original)
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This is the second post in a twenty-two-day series counting down the days to publication (October 20, 2026) with brief excerpts from the foreword, introduction, and each of the twenty essays included in The Best American Essays 2026. This year, the essays were selected by critically acclaimed author and journalist M. Gessen. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Annalise Harter and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.
Day 1: From the Foreword (opens the original)
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Today, the Best American Essays newsletter launches Countdown to Publication, a twenty-two-day series featuring brief excerpts from the foreword, introduction, and each of the twenty essays included in The Best American Essays 2026. The final post will appear on October 20, the publication date for this year’s volume, the forty-first in the series. For an excerpt from Series Editor Kim Dana Kupperman, read on!<a class="button p
In Praise of the Essay: A Launch Event (opens the original)
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Join us in celebrating the publication of The Best American Essays 2026, guest edited by M. Gessen. And stay tuned for our upcoming Countdown to Publication, featuring excerpts from the essays selected for the 2026 volume. Starting September 29, 2006.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="827.5" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!IJvx!,w_1456,c_limit
The Art of the Essay: An In-Person Workshop (opens the original)
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The Slap and the Salamander (opens the original)
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Chris Arthur’s work has been reprinted in The Best American Essays (2009, guest edited by Mary Oliver) and listed as Notable in the series twenty times since 1998.His tenth book of essays, The Slap and the Salamander begins with an epigraph from Graham Good’s book The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay: “Anyone who can look attentively, think freely, and write clearly can
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