The Best American Essays

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2020 brings together outstanding writing from in-depth reporting to incisive criticism. It features extraordinary globe-spanning journalism, including Sarah A. Topol on the genocide against the Rohingya (New York Times Magazine) and Erika Fry on the unintended consequences of a dengue fever vaccine (Fortune). In "India: Intimations of an Ending," Arundhati Roy excoriates the increasing authoritarianism under Modi (The Nation in partnership with Type Media Center). A Q&A with Pamela Colloff accompanies her piece detailing prosecutors' reliance on an untrustworthy jailhouse informant (New York Times Magazine in partnership with ProPublica), and a ProPublica series investigates the disaster that befell the USS Fitzgerald.