We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in essays.
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Posted inNonfiction
Secret Museums
Struggling with the world’s, and his own, homophobia, one queer young man searches for intimacy in the world of internet porn.
Posted inStory
The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country
The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.
Posted inNonfiction
Infatuation
Deena ElGenaidi considers the ways in which adoring Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine from afar in her teens and early 20s provided a safe outlet for expressing desire.
Posted inNonfiction
Best of 2022: All of our No. 5 Story Picks
All the stories we’ve selected as number five in our weekly Top 5 newsletter.
Posted inStory
Naked City
Here, everyone hurries but no one arrives, everyone shows up but no one gets in, everyone’s a member but no one belongs.
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Fiction, Story
Time To Kill the Rabbit?
In two new novels, the bunnies are anything but cute. (Unless … you use magic to turn one of them into a pre-TB Keats, or a talky Tim Riggins.)
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
‘Craft Is My Belief System. My Obligation To Writing Is Religious.’
Nathan Englander talks about the “super-American world” of Orthodox Judaism, Philip Roth’s funeral, and training himself to write his new novel “kaddish.com” while daydreaming.
Posted inReading List
Tangled Up in Bob Stories: A Dylan Reading List
Few musicians have generated as much music and as much study as this Nobel Prize winning singer-songwriter. Dylanology will last hundreds of years.
Posted inNonfiction
The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption
Jeanna Kadlec considers Anne Lister, the historical figure at the center of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, and the influence of other queer women who preceded her.
