Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. He attended Millsaps College, Jackson State University, and Oberlin College before earning an MFA from Indiana University. He is the author of the novel Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He has written essays and stories for numerous publications, including Esquire, ESPN.com, NPR, Truthout, Hip Hop Reader, Mythium, and Politics and Culture. Laymon is currently an associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Vassar College.
EDW Lynch is an American humorist and humanitarian. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator based in San Francisco. Her work appears in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Print. She has illustrated the books Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology; The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert; the forthcoming Meanwhile, San Francisco—the City in Its Own Words; and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Along with Isaac Fitzgerald, she is a co-founder of the Tumblr Pen & Ink, which will be published as a book in 2014. She can be found at wendymacnaughton.com.
Alexander Maksik is the author of the novels You Deserve Nothing and A Marker to Measure Drift. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Harvard Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in New York.
Kyle Minor’s second collection of short fiction, Praying Drunk, will be published in February 2014. His stories and essays have appeared in the Southern Review, the Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2008. He is finishing a first novel, The Sexual Lives of Missionaries. He corresponds with readers at kyleminor.com.
Jack Moore is a comedian, playwright, and TV writer. He created @Seinfeldtoday with his friend Josh Gondelman and has written about sports all over the Internet. Follow him on Twitter: @JackPMoore.
Walter Mosley is the author of more than forty-three critically acclaimed books, including the major best-selling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.
Alix Ohlin is the author of the novels Inside, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Missing Person. She has also published two story collections, Signs and Wonders and Babylon and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best New American Voices, and on public radio’s Selected Shorts.
Peter Orner is the author of two novels, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and Love and Shame and Love, as well as the story collection Esther Stories. His latest book, in which “Foley’s Pond” appears, is Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge. Orner is also the editor of the oral histories, Underground America and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives. Born in Chicago, Orner now lives in Bolinas, California.
Miroslav Penkov was born and raised in Bulgaria. His debut collection East of the West has been published in a dozen countries and his stories have appeared in A Public Space, Granta, One Story, The Best American Short Stories 2008, and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. Winner of the BBC International Short Story Award 2012, he teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas, where he is a fiction editor for the American Literary Review.
Kim Philley was born in Singapore and grew up in Indonesia, Thailand, and Virginia. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Indiana Review, and Epiphany, among other publications. Recently, she reported on the Cambodian-Thai border war at Preah Vihear temple for the Caravan, and on Burmese spirit possession ceremonies from Mandalay for the BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent.” A former Henry Hoyns Fellow in poetry at the University of Virginia, she has taught at both the University of Virginia and Boise State University. She currently lives in a turret of the historic Idanha Hotel in Boise, Idaho.
Sebastian Rotella is an award-winning foreign correspondent and investigative reporter. He worked for almost twenty-three years for the Los Angeles Times, covering everything from terrorism to the arts to the Mexican border. He served most recently as a national security correspondent in Washington, D.C., and his previous posts include international investigative correspondent and bureau chief in Paris and Buenos Aires. In 2006, he was named a Pulitzer finalist for international reporting for his coverage of terrorism and Muslim communities in Europe. Rotella is the author of two books: Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border, which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 1998, and the novel, Triple Crossing, published in August 2011. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and was born in Chicago.
Davy Rothbart is the creator of Found magazine, a frequent contributor to This American Life, and the author of a collection of stories, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, and a book of personal essays, My Heart Is An Idiot, from which “Human Snowball” is excerpted. He writes regularly for GQ and Grantland, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Believer. His documentary film Medora, about a resilient high school basketball team in a dwindling town in rural Indiana, premiered in March 2013 at the SXSW Film Festival. Rothbart is also the founder of Washington II Washington, an annual hiking adventure for inner-city kids. He splits his time between Los Angeles and his hometown of Ann Arbor.
Karen Russell is the author of the story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Swamplandia!, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and one of the New York Times’s Top 5 Fiction Books of 2011. Her latest story collection is Vampires in the Lemon Grove.
Alexis Schaitkin’s stories and essays have appeared in the Southern Review, Southwest Review, and Ecotone, among other places. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s MFA program in fiction. She lives in New York, where she is at work on a novel.
Max Schoening is a researcher in the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. He contributed research to Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict, a forthcoming photography book by Stephen Ferry.
Brendan Todt received his MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry and prose can be found in Ninth Letter, South Dakota Review, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and dog in Sioux City, Iowa. You can find him teaching at Western Iowa Tech, riding his bike into stiff headwinds, or refereeing soccer across Siouxland. Visit him at brendantodt.com.
Andrew Tonkovich edits the literary magazine Santa Monica Review, blogs about books at the OC Weekly, and hosts the literary arts program Bibliocracy on Pacifica radio station KPFK in Southern California. His essays and short stories have appeared recently in Ecotone, Faultline, Portside, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches writing at UC Irvine and represents librarians and fellow lecturers on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers.
Madhuri Vijay received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her short story “Lorry Raja” won Narrative Magazine’s 30-Below Contest. She currently lives in India.
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922. He studied at Cornell University and the University of Chicago. Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. He would go on to write over twenty-five books, among them Cat’s Cradle; God Bless You, Mr. Rose-water; Breakfast of Champions; and Galápagos. During the Second World War he was held prisoner in Germany and was present at the bombing of Dresden, an experience that provided the setting for his most famous work, Slaughterhouse-Five.
Shari Wagner is the author of two books of poems, The Harmonist at Nightfall and Evening Chore, as well as the editor and cowriter of her father’s memoir of Somalia, A Hundred Camels. Her poems have appeared in Nor
th American Review, Shenandoah, Poetry East, and The Writer’s Almanac. She lives with her family in Westfield, Indiana, and teaches for the Indiana Writers Center.
Dan Wakefield is the author of the novel Going All the Way and a collection of essays, Spiritually Incorrect. His memoirs include New York in the Fifties and Returning: A Spiritual Journey. He edited and wrote the introduction to Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novels The Love Song of Jonny Valentine and Kapitoil, which won a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award, was a runner-up for the PEN/Bingham Prize, and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is the recipient of an NEA creative writing fellowship, and his work regularly appears in The New Yorker, the New York Times, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Marymount Manhattan College, and he lives in New York.
Originally from Henderson County in the North Carolina mountains, Robert West now teaches in the Department of English at Mississippi State University. His poems have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and elsewhere. His latest collection is the chapbook Convalescent.
Tim Wirkus’s fiction has appeared in Subtropics, Gargoyle, the Cream City Review, Sou’wester, and Ruminate Magazine. He is currently finishing work on his first novel, in which two Mormon missionaries investigate the disappearance of a man they baptized. Tim is a student in the University of Southern California’s PhD program in creative writing and literature.
Jim Wise is a poet whose work has appeared in Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, RFD, and a number of online journals and zines. He can usually be found reading Walt Whitman in a cottage just outside Indianapolis, which he shares with his partner and muse, Steven Chen.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee
The student committee at 826 Valencia in San Francisco was joined by an outfit of brilliant high schoolers at 826 Michigan in Ann Arbor. Together, these two groups scoured the magazines and journals of America in order to find the best work of the year. What you hold in your hands is the product of their tireless research and intense deliberation.
Hanel Baveja is a senior at Huron High School in Ann Arbor. This is her fourth year as part of the BANR editing committee. She prefers pancakes to waffles and plain paper to lined. She enjoys reading and writing short stories, poetry, and plays. She is also fond of traveling and eating blue cheese, zucchini bread, and crepes.
Lianna Bernstein is a senior in high school and lives in Ann Arbor. This is her second year in BANR and she also participates in tennis, bowling, and basketball at her school. She is passionate about peppermint tea, bike rides, and her weekly phone calls with her older siblings. She is often quoted as saying “I am done,” “so done,” and “someone bring me chocolate.” This summer she’ll be rereading Harry Potter and spending way too much money at Starbucks.
Claire Butz is a senior at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. She loves the smell of Crayola crayons, flipping to the cold side of the pillow, and arriving at her destination just as a song ends. Her heart lies in Long Island, and not a day goes by where she doesn’t wish she were sailing on Tomahawk Lake. Claire’s bucket list includes seeing the Rolling Stones in concert and learning to speak Italian.
Sophie Chabon was born in October of 1994 in Los Angeles, CA. She migrated north at the age of two and lived in Berkeley for a number of years, until she packed up again and headed to the woods of Central Connecticut to attend Wesleyan University. She loves the works of Whedon and Kerouac and is well aware that winter is coming. She is 5'6½".
After living in Idaho and Utah, Aimee Echols-Chase finished high school in San Francisco. She is now traversing the Parisian streets whilst attending NYU Liberal Studies. She is fascinated with economic theory and long fiction. Aimee also possesses an ever-evolving affinity for string instruments. She is currently inclined toward bass, and you’ll be happy to know that she is already performing sub-par renditions of Radiohead and Cake songs.
Gladis Figueroa is sixteen years old and a junior at Immaculate Conception Academy in San Francisco. Her hobbies include playing sports and singing. After school, she usually hangs out with her friends or takes care of her younger sisters. Her ethnicity is El Salvadoreña and Guatemalteca. She has been a student at 826 Valencia for seven years.
Claire Fishman is a junior at Huron High School in Ann Arbor. Her school is shaped like an “H” and she spends a lot of time thinking about this. Her favorite president is Martin Van Buren. He was very cool. He tended to swear in Dutch. Perhaps this was so others wouldn’t understand him. It has been her experience that people can always tell when you’re swearing.
Sarah Gargaro is a senior at Greenhills High School in Ann Arbor. This is her fourth year spent reading nonrequired, occasionally bizarre pieces in the basement of the Robot Shop. She makes a mean lasagna, her handwriting is fluid (she changed both her “Ps” and “g’s” just this year), and she enjoys writing in marker.
Valerie Guevara, eighteen years old, was planted and cultivated in the heart of San Francisco. She now ventures farther than ever, attending the University of California, Berkeley. The way to her heart is through high-quality coffee and expensive cheese. She wishes her mango eating skills had more pizzazz, like her stories.
Quinn Johns is a senior at Huron High School in Ann Arbor. When he is not sleeping or rowing on the nearby river, he is most likely enjoying a good book outside, unless of course it’s raining. This fall begins the fourth of a quatrain of fantastic BANR experiences. He enjoys an excellent cup of hot chocolate or regular water.
Roger Krupetsky is a student at Skyline College in San Bruno, CA, and a graduate of Independence High School in San Francisco. He has a 65 percent encounter rate at Dolores Park in the summer, dropping to 10 percent in all other seasons. Other popular encounter locations include various MMORPGs and his local taquería. He can be lured out of his nest with promises of social interaction during colder months.
Shalini Lakshmanan is a sophomore at Huron High School in Ann Arbor. She enjoys reading short stories and long novels as well as baking cookies and muffins of different varieties. Her favorite pastime is encountering new and different authors as well as recipes. She hopes to continue participating in BANR next year.
Rebecca Landau is a senior at Berkeley High School. When she is not reading or writing, she is usually busy procrastinating. She enjoys the works of Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Her shoelace is probably untied right now but hey, the entropy of the universe is ever increasing so don’t blame her.
Elizabeth Malan is a senior at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor. This has been her second year in BANR and she is very much looking forward to a third. Generally, Beth enjoys activities such as painting, writing and, naturally, reading. She believes that dragons and tea are both excellent pastimes, and one of her favorite books is The Thinker’s Thesaurus.
Flavia Mora, seventeen, is a freshman at City College in San Francisco. She is a graduate of San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. This past year was her second year on the BANR committee. She is hoping to pursue her interest in integrating social science and art in her future career.
Annabel Ostrow is a senior at Lick Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, where she swims, stage manages, and strives to be politically correct at all times. One summer she took a course exploring the idea of the epic hero through the lens of the Harry Potter books, and she remains unembarrassed by the geekiness this reveals. Meanwhile, she loves working on BANR and discovering new and unconventional voices.
Marco Ponce, fourteen, is a sophomore at George Washington High School in San Francisco. Marco has attended the 826 Valencia after-school tutoring program since he was in third grade. He loves soccer and learning new things. He is passionate about fighting for what is right, and he may or may not want to be president.
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Milton Pineda, eighteen, graduated from Academy of Arts and Sciences in San Francisco and is now a freshman at San Francisco State University. His hobbies include activities that require minimal movement and physical effort, such as music, video games, Reddit, and hanging out with friends and family. He plans to major in business administration or anything else that grabs his attention.
Hosanna Rubio is a senior at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco, as well as a proud descendent of African slaves. She wants to learn how to weave baskets, whittle, and freestyle straight off the dome. She is infatuated with the music of Jermaine Cole (J. Cole) and loves life whenever it involves Abigail Schott-Rosenfield. Hosanna is learning “the system” so she can change it. She’s almost there.