The Best American Nonrequired Reading is a yearly anthology of fiction and nonfiction selected annually by high school students in California and Michigan through 826 Valencia and 826michigan. [1] [2] [3] The volume is part of The Best American Series and is edited by Dave Eggers. [4] In the editor's note to the 2013 volume, Eggers stated that the 12th edition would be his last as editor. The 2014 volume was edited by Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket. The 2019 is the last volume as it has been discontinued by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [5]
| Year | Edition | Editor | Series Editor | Introduction | Cover Artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 1st | Dave Eggers | Dave Eggers | J. Otto Seibold | |
| 2003 | 2nd | Dave Eggers | Zadie Smith | Daniel Clowes | |
| 2004 | 3rd | Dave Eggers | Viggo Mortensen | Adrian Tomine | |
| 2005 | 4th | Dave Eggers | Beck | Tony Millionaire | |
| 2006 | 5th | Dave Eggers | Matt Groening | Art Spiegelman | |
| 2007 | 6th | Dave Eggers | Sufjan Stevens | Carson Ellis | |
| 2008 | 7th | Dave Eggers | Judy Blume | Barry McGee | |
| 2009 | 8th | Dave Eggers | Marjane Satrapi | Banksy | |
| 2010 | 9th | Dave Eggers | David Sedaris | Maurice Sendak | |
| 2011 | 10th | Dave Eggers | Guillermo del Toro | William Joyce | |
| 2012 | 11th | Dave Eggers | Ray Bradbury | Brian Selznick | |
| 2013 | 12th | Dave Eggers | Walter Mosley | Camille Rose Garcia | |
| 2014 | 13th | Daniel Handler | 826 National | Lemony Snicket | Roman Muradov |
| 2015 | 14th | Adam Johnson | 826 National | Adam Johnson | Eric Nyquist |
| 2016 | 15th | Rachel Kushner | 826 National | Rachel Kushner | Jillian Tamaki |
| 2017 | 16th | Sarah Vowell | 826 National | Sarah Vowell | Kenard Pak |
| 2018 | 17th | Sheila Heti | 826 National | Sheila Heti | Tommi Parrish |
| 2019 | 18th | Edan Lepucki | 826 National | Edan Lepucki | Molly Egan |
 | This article about an anthology of written works is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal, a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines.
Zyzzyva is a triannual magazine of writers and artists. It places an emphasis on showcasing emerging voices and never before published writers in addition to the already established. Based in San Francisco, it began publishing in 1985. ZYZZYVA's slogan is "The Last Word," referring to "zyzzyva", the last word in the American Heritage Dictionary. A zyzzyva is an American weevil. The accent is on the first syllable.
McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers in 1998, headquartered in San Francisco. McSweeney's initially published only the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, but has grown to publish novels, books of poetry, and other periodicals.
The Best American Series is a series of anthologies that is published annually by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Each title within the series covers a specific genre such as short stories or mysteries. The works for each year's edition are selected from those published elsewhere during the previous year.
The Southwest Review is a literary journal published quarterly, based on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas. It is the third oldest literary quarterly in the United States. The current editor-in-chief is Greg Brownderville.
Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.
Douglas Light is an American novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer.
Joshua Clark is an American author, editor and publisher who resides in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African novelist and short-story writer. She was the 2008 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her speculative-fiction story "Poison". Her novel Nineveh was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Prize for Fiction and the M-Net Literary Awards. In September of that year her story "Sanctuary" was awarded second place in the 2012 BBC (Inter)national Short Story Award.
Jacob M. Appel is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics, and euthanasia. Appel's novel The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up won the Dundee International Book Prize in 2012. He is the director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry and an associate professor of psychiatry and medical education at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and he practices emergency psychiatry at the adjoining Mount Sinai Health System. Appel is the subject of the 2019 documentary film Jacob by director Jon Stahl.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, a volume in The Best American Nonrequired Reading series, was edited by Dave Eggers and introduced by Judy Blume. The works anthologized are selected by high school students in California and Michigan through 826 Valencia and 826michigan.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 is the sixth annual volume in The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology series. It is edited by Dave Eggers, introduced by Sufjan Stevens, and has cover art by Carson Ellis. It contains nineteen short pieces of fiction and non-fiction by various authors.
Monkeybicycle is a literary journal with both print and Web versions. It was founded in 2002 in Seattle, Washington, by Steven Seighman. He was intent on publishing both well-known writers and those who might not have been heard of yet, but should be. He enlisted the help of writer Shya Scanlon and together ran both versions of the journal, as well as created a very successful monthly reading series in downtown Seattle.
Paula W. Peterson is an American short story writer.
David Gessner is an American essayist, memoirist, nature writer, editor, and cartoonist.
Jeff, One Lonely Guy is a 2012 nonfiction book by Jeff Ragsdale. It was published on March 20, 2012 by New Harvest. Dave Eggers selected the book for inclusion in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and it was a GQ 2012 "Book of the Year". In 2014 Amitava Kumar included portions of Jeff, One Lonely Guy in his newly released book, A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna. Kumar previously interviewed Ragsdale and wrote about him in The New York Times.
Fiction Writers Review is an online literary journal that publishes reviews of new fiction, interviews with fiction writers, and essays on craft and the writing life. The journal was founded in 2008 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in Michigan in 2011. In 2012 it received 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
Scouting for the Reaper (2014) is the first collection of short stories by American author Jacob M. Appel. It won the Hudson Prize in 2012 and was published by Black Lawrence Press. Writing Today named it the best debut collection of 2014.
The Adroit Journal is an American literary magazine founded in November 2010. Published five times per year by founding editor Peter LaBerge, the journal was produced with the support of the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House from 2013 to 2017, was based in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2017 to 2019, and is currently based in the greater New York City area.
Michael P. Branch is an ecocritic, writer, and humorist with over three hundred publications, including work in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. An important member of the environmental and writing community, Western American Literature has described him as part of the "enduring procession of outdoor journalists."