STEVEN HARVEY is the author of three books of personal essays: A Geometry of Lilies, Lost in Translation, and Bound for Shady Grove. He has also edited an anthology of essays on middle age, written by men, called In a Dark Wood. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Young Harris College as well as a founding member of the nonfiction faculty in the Ashland University MFA program in creative writing. He lives in the north Georgia mountains.
WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY is the author of three novels—the award-winning A Different Drummer, A Drop of Patience, and Dunfords Travels Everywheres—and a short story collection, Dancers on the Shore. In 2008 he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. He has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College since 1989. He lives with his family in Harlem and has recently completed his fourth novel, Dis/Integration.
JON KERSTETTER completed three combat tours in Iraq as an army physician and flight surgeon. He earned an MD degree at the Mayo Medical School, an MS in business from the University of Utah, and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Ashland University. Dr. Kerstetter’s medical career included practice in emergency and military medicine, disaster relief, and education in emergency medicine in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Honduras. He was the in-country director of the Johns Hopkins training program in emergency medicine at the University of Phristina in Kosovo. He retired from medical practice and the military in 2009 and resides in Iowa City with his wife.
WALTER KIRN is the national correspondent for the New Republic. He is the author of several novels, including Thumbsucker and Up in the Air, which were made into feature films. His most recent book is a memoir of his education, Lost in the Meritocracy. He lives in Montana and California.
MICHELLE MIRSKY lives and writes in Austin, Texas, where she also works an earnest nine-to-five job, kind of like a superhero with a secret identity. Only not super. Or secret. She was the winner of the grand prize in the 2011 McSweeney’s column contest. Her essays have appeared in McSweeney’s and in print.
ANDER MONSON is the author of, most recently, Letter to a Future Lover (forthcoming in 2015), short essays on six-by-nine-inch cards written in and on libraries and things found in libraries and thereafter published back into the spaces where they originated, and eventually collected, unordered, into a box, which he supposes is a book, since it is after all bound and collected there.
ANGELA MORALES’s most recent essays have appeared in the Harvard Review, the Baltimore Review, the Southern Review, and River Teeth. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Currently she teaches English at Glendale Community College and is working on a collection of autobiographical essays.
ALICE MUNRO is the author of Dear Life: Stories. Her recent collections include The View from Castle Rock and Too Much Happiness. In 2009 she was awarded the Man Booker International Prize.
EILEEN POLLACK’s most recent novel, Breaking and Entering, was awarded the 2012 Grub Street National Book Prize and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. She is also the author of Paradise, New York (a novel) and two collections of short fiction, In the Mouth and The Rabbi in the Attic, as well as a work of creative nonfiction called Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull and two innovative textbooks, Creative Nonfiction and Creative Composition. “Pigeons” is an excerpt from her memoir in progress, Approaching Infinity. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan.
KEVIN SAMPSELL is the author of the memoir A Common Pornography (2010) and the novel This Is Between Us (2013). His essays and fiction have appeared in Nerve, Hobart, the Good Men Project, the Rumpus, the Fairy Tale Review, NANO Fiction, the Associated Press, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.
RICHARD SCHMITT is the author of The Aerialist, a novel (2001), and has published in the Cimarron Review, the Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, and other places. His story “Leaving Venice, Florida,” won first prize in the Mississippi Review short story contest and was anthologized in New Stories of the South: The Year’s Best 1999. Schmitt has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2002.
DAVID SEARCY lives in Dallas, Texas. His first collection of essays, Shame and Wonder, will be published in 2014.
ZADIE SMITH is the author of four novels, White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005), which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW (2012). She is also the author of Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009) and the editor of a story collection, The Book of Other People (2007). She has taught creative writing at New York University since 2010.
MEGAN STIELSTRA is the literary director of 2nd Story, a personal narrative performance series dedicated to bringing people together through story. She has told stories for all sorts of theaters, festivals, and bars, including the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Poetry Center, Story Week, Wordstock, Neo-Futurarium, and Chicago Public Radio. Her story collection, Everyone Remain Calm, was a Chicago Tribune Favorite of 2011, and her writing has appeared in the Rumpus, Pank, Other Voices, f Magazine, Make Magazine, the Nervous Breakdown, Swink, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and performance at Columbia College Chicago and the University of Chicago, and her debut essay collection is forthcoming in spring 2014.
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of the Paris Review. He writes for GQ, Harper’s Magazine, and Oxford American and is the author of Blood Horses and Pulphead, a 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. Sullivan lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
VANESSA VESELKA is the author of the novel Zazen, which won the 2012 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House and ZYZZYVA, and her nonfiction is found in GQ, the Atlantic, the American Reader, and Salon.com. She has also been, at times, a teenage runaway, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother.
MATTHEW VOLLMER is the author of Future Missionaries of America, a collection of stories, and Inscriptions for Headstones, a collection of essays, each crafted as an epitaph and each unfolding in a single sentence. With David Shields, he is coeditor of Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts. His work has appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including the Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Ecotone, New England Review, elimae, DIAGRAM, the Normal School, the Carolina Quarterly, Oxford American, and the Sun. A recent winner of an NEA fellowship, he is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, where he directs the undergraduate creative writing program.
Although she is “originally from” Shanghai, VICKI WEIQI YANG currently resides in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where she studies political science at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include structures of governance, political theory, and security in East Asia. She has yet to muster the mettle required to call herself a writer, so she prefers the term student.
MAKO YOSHIKAWA is currently at work on a memoir about her father. She is the author of the novels One Hundred and One Ways and Once Removed. Her work has been translated into six languages; awards for her writing include a Radcliffe Fellowship. As a literary critic she has published articles that explore the relationship between incest and race in twentieth-century American fiction. Her essays have appeared in the Missouri Review and the Southern Indiana Review. She is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College, Boston.
Notable Essays of 2012
SELECTED BY ROBERT ATWAN
ANWAR F. ACCAWI
The Camel, The Sun, October.
JOAN ACOCELLA
Once upon a Time, The New Yorker, July 23.
JUDITH ADKINS
The Tree, the Forest, Colorado Review, Fall/Winter.
JERRY ADLER
Raging Bulls, Wired, September.
&nb
sp; JASON ALBERT
Down and Out in a Repurposed Troop Carrier, Morning News, August 27.
PAMELA ALEXANDER
Brush of Wildness, Cimarron Review, Fall.
SUE ALLISON
What I Did Without You, Crazyhorse, Spring.
HILTON ALS
I Am Your Conscious, I Am Love, Harper’s Magazine, December.
AIMEE ANDERSON
Indian Springs, Gargoyle, no. 58.
DONALD ANDERSON
Gathering Noise, Epoch, vol. 61, no. 2.
ISAAC ANDERSON
Lord God Bird, Image, no. 72.
ANONYMOUS
The Facts of the Matter, TriQuarterly, October 22.
DAVID ANTIN
White Ravens Black Helicopters, Southern Review, Spring.
JACOB M. APPEL
Livery, Southeast Review, vol. 30, no. 1.
ELIZABETH ARNOLD
Crossing the Divide, Gettysburg Review, Autumn.
ALAN ARRIVEE
The Appropriate Use of Hands, Florida Review, Summer.
CHRIS ARTHUR
Looking Behind “Nothing’s” Door, Hotel Amerika, Spring.
OLUMAYOWA ATTE
Road to Ibadan, New Letters, vol. 79, no. 1.
TIMOTHY AUBRY
Sizing Up Oprah, The Point, Spring.
LAURA JEAN BAKER
Year of the Tiger, War, Literature, and the Arts, no. 24.
ROSECRANS BALDWIN
Our French Connection, Morning News, May 29.
RICK BAROT
Morandi Sonnet, ZYZZYVA, Winter.
JOHN BARTH
The End?, Granta, Winter.
RICK BASS
The Larch: A Love Story, Orion, September/October.
ELISSA BASSIST
The Never-to-Be Bride, New York Times, Sunday, April 29.
CHARLES BAXTER
Undoings: An Essay in Three Parts, Colorado Review, Spring.
CRIS BEAM
Mother, Stranger, Atavist, January.
MARK BEAVER
Taxidermy, Third Coast, Fall.
LOUIS BEGLEY
My Europe, New York Review of Books, April 5.
THOMAS BELLER
The Fun of Bad Business, Oxford American, no. 77.
GEOFFREY BENT
The Virtuoso, Boulevard, Fall.
MISCHA BERLINSKI
A Farewell to Haiti, New York Review of Books, March 22.
FLYNN BERRY
Surfing, Los Angeles Review, Fall.
SASKIA BEUDEL
Ground Glass, Iowa Review, Spring.
JILL BIALOSKY
How to Say Good-Bye, Real Simple, February.
SVEN BIRKERTS
It Wants to Find You, Agni, no. 76.
ALTHEA BLACK
Essay to be Read at 3 A.M., Narrative.
KATHLEEN BLACKBURN
Where Now Is, River Teeth, Fall.
JUDY BLUNT
Occupying the Real West, New Letters, vol. 78, nos. 3 & 4.
BELLE BOGGS
The Art of Waiting, Orion, March/April.
JOE BONOMO
Live Nude Essay! Gulf Coast, Winter/Spring.
ROBERT BOYERS
My “Others,” Yale Review, January.
NATHANIEL BRODIE
Sparks, Creative Nonfiction, Spring.
STEVEN MATTHEW BROWN
Rest Stop Apologia, Black Warrior Review, Spring/Summer.
LINDA BUCKMASTER
Becoming Memory, Upstreet, no. 8.
RACHEL IDA BUFF
All the Strange Hours: A Taxonomy, Southern Review, Winter.
FRANK BURES
The Fall of the Creative Class, Thirty Two, July/August.
TRACY BURKHOLDER
Proof, Cincinnati Review, Summer.
CARAND BURNET
Axis, Gulf Coast, Summer/Fall.
FRANKLIN BURROUGHS
For What Blood Was Worth, Sewanee Review, Summer.
STEPHEN BURT
On Growing Up Between Genders, New Haven Review, Summer.
SAM BUTLER
Elvis Presley Has Been Avenged, Gettysburg Review, Winter.
PETER BYRNE
Cliché Bound in Naples, Able Muse, Summer.
BILL CAPOSSERE
Strange Travelers, Colorado Review, Fall/Winter.
ANNE CARSON
We Point the Bone, Tin House, no. 52.
OSCAR CÁSARES
My Name Is Cásares, Texas Monthly, November.
MAUD CASEY
A Stubborn Desire, A Public Space, no. 15.
FRANK CASSESE
It Doesn’t Mean We’re Wasting Our Time, Guernica, November 1.
MAURICIO CASTILLO
MD, ☺, American Journal of Neuroradiology, September.
LESLIE CATON
Do You Really Want a Bird?, Wapsipinicon Almanac, no. 19.
JANE CAWTHORNE
Something as Big as a Mountain, Prism, Spring.
MELISSA CHADBURN
The Throwaways, The Rumpus, January 25.
MAY-LEE CHAI
The Blue Boot, Missouri Review, Summer.
STEVEN CHURCH
Fight, Bull, Prairie Schooner, Winter.
ANDREW D. COHEN
Searching for Benny Paret, Normal School, Spring.
PAULA MARANTZ Cohen
The Meanings of Forgery, Southwest Review, vol. 97, no. 1.
RACHEL COHEN
Gold, Golden, Gilded, Glittering, The Believer, November/December.
RICH COHEN
Pirate City, Paris Review, Summer.
BARBARA FLUG COLIN
Now Let’s Stare at the Purple, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Winter.
WILHEMINA CONDON
Walnut and Vine, North Dakota Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 4.
ELI CONNAUGHTON
Burial, Alligator Juniper, 2012.
REBECCA COOK
Flame, Southeast Review, vol. 30, no. 1.
MARTHA COOLEY
Go Tell Your Father, Agni, no. 76.
MARAYA CORNELL
Landslides, Antioch Review, Spring.
ROGER CONANT CRANSE
The Hearts and Minds Guys, Raritan, Fall.
PAUL CRENSHAW
When the War Began, War, Literature, and the Arts, no. 24.
RUTH W. CROCKER
Sam’s Way, Gettysburg Review, Spring.
DEBORAH CUMMINS
Names: Remaking the Calendar, Under the Sun, Summer.
CHARLES D’AMBROSIO
True Believer, Tin House, no. 53.
JIM DAMERON
All Ages Were Represented, Missouri Review, Summer.
MEGHAN DAUM
Haterade, The Believer, January.
JOHN DEBON
It’s Like When Your Mom Dies, Concho River Review, Spring.
JENNIFER DE LEON
The White Space, Fourth Genre, Spring.
SUSAN DETWEILER
Under the Cloud, Missouri Review, Winter.
AILEEN DILLANE
Jim, Across the Road, New Hibernia Review, Spring.
KENT H. DIXON
Sharkwalker, Florida Review, Summer.
CHRIS DOMBROWSKI
Chance Baptisms, Orion, July/August.
JOE DONAVAN
Nonfiction Love, Gold Man Review, no. 1.
MARTHA ANDREWS DONOVAN
Dangerous Archeology, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Spring/Summer.
MATT DONOVAN
The House of Vettii, Cutbank, no. 77.
MARK DOSTERT
Shorties, Ascent, August 12.
JACQUELINE DOYLE
The Tyranny of Things, South Dakota Review, Spring.
REGINA DREXLER
Landslide, Colorado Review, Spring.
ANDRE DUBUS III
Writing & Publishing a Memoir: What in the Hell Have I Done?, River Teeth, Fall.
IRINA ALEXANDRA DUMITRESCU
Tasting Texas, Southwest Review, vol. 97, no. 1.
LENA DUN
HAM
First Love, The New Yorker, August 13 & 20.
MEENAKSHI GIGI DURHAM
Hunger Pangs, Iowa Review, Fall.
GEOFF DYER
Street View, The Believer, June.
MARK EDMUNDSON