The Best American Essays 2026
About this audiobook
Featuring multiple narrators, each essay is brought uniquely and vivdly to life.
“The essayist needs the objective world,” writes M. Gessen, the guest editor of The Best American Essays 2026, asking, “But does the objective world need the essayist?” There is no straightforward answer to Gessen’s query, yet the authors in this volume tackle it headfirst. In doing so, they provide a mosaic depicting the year 2025, examining the degradation of American media, human consciousness, queer identity, wealth disparity, illness, capital punishment, war, and art. The twenty authors featured here show us that the essay and its subjective nature make meaning of a world that is growing more incomprehensible with each day.
THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2026 INCLUDES: HILTON ALS • TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER • ANDREA LONG CHU • FERNANDA EBERSTADT • BEN LERNER • TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG • JENNIFER SENIOR • JIA TOLENTINO • CHRISTIAN WIMAN • AND OTHERS
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About the author
M. Gessen is the author of twelve books, including the National Book Award–winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. An Opinion columnist for The New York Times, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing, as well as Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships, Gessen teaches at Bard College and lives in New York City.
Kim Dana Kupperman is the author of the award-winning essay collection I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence; a memoir, The Last of Her; and a historical novel, Six Thousand Miles to Home. She is the editor of You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person and the founding editor of Welcome Table Press, whose mission is to publish and celebrate the essay, in all its forms.
