The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

by Dave Eggers

  Don DeLillo was awarded the 2010 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for fiction. He was born in New York City in 1936, and his many novels include: White Noise (1985), winner of the American Book Award for fiction; Mao II (1991), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award; and Underworld (1997), one of the best three novels of the last twenty-five years, according to the New York Times in 2006. His most recent novel, Point Omega, was published in 2010. DeLillo lives in Bronx-ville, New York, with his wife.

  William Deresiewicz is a critic, essayist, and the author of A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter. He is a contributing writer at The Nation and a contributing editor at the New Republic. His work has also been published in the New York Times Book Review, Slate, Bookforum, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. His work was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2008, 2009, and 2011. His current book project is to be called Excellent Sheep: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education.

  This past spring, José Hernández Díaz graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an English degree. Next, he plans to do an MFA in creative writing. His favorite poets are those of the Chicano Renaissance, as well as the Beats. Hernández has been published in Bombay Gin, ABCtales, La Bloga, and The Peak. He's an active member of the online group "Poets Responding to SB1070," where he has posted eight poems in an effort to resist the Arizona law.

  Anthony Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho. He's the author of four books: Memory Wall, The Shell Collector, About Grace, and Four Seasons in Rome, and his writing has won three O. Henry Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

  Neil Gaiman has written acclaimed books for both adults and younger readers, and has won many major awards, including the Hugo and the Nebula. His novel The Graveyard Book was the only book to win both the Newbery and Carnegie (UK) medals. His New York Times best-selling books include Coraline and Stardust (both adapted into films), American Gods, and Anansi Boys. His comics series The Sandman was described by the Los Angeles Times as "the greatest epic in the history of comic books."

  Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. A former head of the BBC Urdu Service, he is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in 2009. He lives in Karachi.

  Ralph Haskins was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. His family moved to South Texas during the social turmoil of the 1960s. The new cultural challenges he experienced led him to express himself through poetry. Today, Ralph lives in McAllen, Texas, where he supplements his poet's income by moonlighting as a science teacher at a local high school.

  Amy Hempel's Collected Stories won the Ambassador Award for best fiction of the year, and was one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year. She has won the REA Award for the Short Story, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Fiction. She teaches writing at Harvard and Bennington College.

  Javier O. Huerta is the author of Some Clarifications y otros poemas (Arte Publico, 2007). He is currently studying for his Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

  Chris Jones writes for Esquire and is a contributor to www.grantland.com. He also keeps a blog about writing at www.sonofboldventure.blogspot.com. He lives in Port Hope, Ontario, with his wife and two sons. He doesn't get much sleep.

  William Joyce has achieved worldwide recognition as an author, illustrator, and leader in the digital animation industry. He was named by Newsweek as one of the one hundred people to watch in the new millennium. He is also a cover artist for The New Yorker and a member of both the Producers and Writers Guilds of America. Projects based on his works have been successfully translated into feature films and television shows, including Robots, Meet the Robinsons, Rolie Polie Olie, and George Shrinks. Joyce is currently codirecting The Guardians, an animated feature for Dream Works. More at moonbotstudios.com.

  Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, filmmaker, and multimedia reporter. He works for the Detroit News, and was previously a national correspondent for the New York Times.

  J. Robert Lennon is the author of seven books, including Mailman, Castle, and Pieces for the Left Hand. His next novel, Familiar, will be published in 2012. He teaches writing at Cornell University.

  Sylvia Maltzman grew up in Miami, a fact which is often reflected in her poetry. She has a bachelor's degree in English from Florida International University and she plans on tackling a master's as well. Her writing has appeared in various venues nationally and internationally, including the webzine Arachneed (India), and she has put out a self-published poetry collection, Down to the Wire. Tutor, teacher, and assistant are a few of the hats she wears daily, along with a blue straw fedora. She's in love with the ways that God gets our attention through nature; hence, her favorite quote is from Walt Whitman: "Look for me under your boot-soles."

  Mac McClelland is the human rights reporter for Mother Jones, and has been described variously as "a total badass" by the American Prospect and "a profane young bisexual" by the Wall Street Journal. Her piece in this collection was nominated for a National Magazine Award, and was adapted from her 2010 book For Us Surrender Is Out ofthe Question.

  Joyce Carol Oates is the author most recently of the story collection Sourland and the memoir, A Widow's Story. She is the 2010 recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Award from the National Book Critics Circle and has been a member, since 1978, of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Michael Paterniti's stories have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, and GQ, where he is a correspondent. He is the author of an upcoming book entitled The Telling Room, a true tale about cheese and revenge in a small Spanish village.

  Padgett Powell is the author most recently of The Interrogative Mood. His book You £ I is being published in England this fall.

  Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African writer based in Cape Town. Her latest novel, Nineveh, was published by Random House Struik in August 2011. She has also published a collection of short stories, Homing, and two previous novels, Shark's Egg and The Rock Alphabet. In 2008 she won the Caine Prize for African Writing, for which she was short-listed in 2007. She received the 2007 South African PEN Literary Award and was a runner-up for the 2010 Willesden Herald Short Story Prize.

  Anjali Sachdeva likes to hike in the back country and ride the bus for days at a time. Her work has been published in Northern Woman, Sonora Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Pittsburgh and is an assistant editor at Creative Nonfiction.

  Olivier Schrauwen was born in Belgium in 1977 and studied animation at the Academy of Art in Gent, and comics at the Saint Luc in Brussels. He currently lives in Berlin.

  Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., in 1972, and emigrated to the United States seven years later, settling with his family in New York. He is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City; Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics; and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing. He is the author of two novels: Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story. Shteyngart now lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He teaches writing at Columbia University and Princeton University.

  James Spring's stories have been featured on various National Public Radio programs, including Stories from the Heart of the Land and This American Life. His hobbies include riding dirt bikes and locating people who have disappeared in Latin America. He lives in San Diego.

  James Sturm is the cartoonist of James Sturm's America, Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, Adventures in Cartooning, The Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, and Market Day. He is also the editor of The Center for Cartoon Studies Presents, a series of historical graphic novels about the lives of notable Americans. His comics, writing, and illustrations have appeared in scores of national and regional publications including the Chronicle of Higher E
ducation, the Onion, the New York Times, and on the cover of The New Yorker.

  Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, was born in 1835 in the small town of Florida, Missouri. The pseudonym came from his days as a river pilot: "mark twain" is a term that means "two fathoms," telling pilots the water is deep enough to navigate safely. Clemens/Twain grew up in Hannibal, Mississippi, and at thirteen left school to become a printer's apprentice. He soon became an editorial assistant, a river pilot, and later a newspaper reporter. He wrote twenty-eight books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. He died in 1910.

  Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index was a National Book Award finalist, and her short stories have appeared in various publications, including The Best American Short Stories. Her essays are published every other week in the Boston Globe's op-ed section. "The Boys' School, or the News from Spain" is part of her new book of fiction, which is all about love.

  The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee

  FOR ANOTHER YEAR, the student committee in San Francisco was joined from afar by a group of talented Michigan high schoolers. Based at 826michigan (in Ann Arbor) and led by Kendra Shaw, this contingent of the Best American Nonrequired Reading (BANR) committee, like the students in San Francisco, unearthed articles and stories, read them, sparred over their merits and flaws, and helped with the sprawling task of putting together this collection.

  Melanie Bahti is from Ann Arbor, and went to Greenhills High School while working on this book. She is currently living in Morocco and will be attending Bryn Mawr College in 2012. She likes to drink tea and look at maps. Her favorite piece in the collection is "We Show What We Have Learned." It makes her nervous.

  Erin Baughn is a junior this fall at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she spends her Novembers furiously writing for National Novel Writing Month. She procrastinates writing novels by watching anime. Erin is a Facebook stalker, a regular stalker, and is possibly being stalked herself. If you were to look in her window late at night, you would find her baking, or watching Glee or American Idol. Erin is also an obsessive fangirl about: Scott Westerfeld novels, music by Tokio Hotel, and black holes.

  Hanel Baveja is a sophomore this fall at Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her favorite authors include J. D. Salinger, John Updike, and playwright Walter Wykes. She plays soccer and the clarinet, and enjoys reading, writing, and Tuesday night Best American Nonrequired Reading meetings at 826michigan. Her favorite story this year, if she had to choose just one, is "The Boys' School," by Joan Wickersham, because it's like a quiet storm that just keeps building and building and if's really quite glorious.

  Ezra Brooks-Planck is a fan of Michael Crichton, Robert Jordan, and Ricky Gervais. He is a sophomore this fall at Chelsea High School in Ann Arbor. An avid anglophile, he sometimes speaks in an English accent, drinks British tea, and uses English vocabulary. He enjoys fighting dragons, goblins, and kobolds, and likes to raise his sword in the air and yell, "For Stormdine!" His favorite selection this year is "Art of the Steal," because he has always liked the idea of being very stealthy.

  Sophie Buchmueller is a senior this fall at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. She enjoys reading, traveling, and being outside in the sun. She can't stand the cold, and winter is her least favorite season. She plays lacrosse for school and club teams, and plays Ping-Pong for fun. Her favorite piece is "Art of the Steal," because it is too outrageous to be true, except that it is.

  Claire Butz is a sophomore this fall at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. She loves playing field hockey, even if it means dribbling around her room before bed. Claire is a member of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation's Youth Council and helps to distribute grant money to organizations that work with youth.

  By the time you read this, Julia Butz will be a freshman at Georgetown. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Julia attended Greenhills High School while working on this book. Highlights over the years include: the Ann Arbor/San Francisco penpal exchange, scheming ways to procure free cupcakes from the shop across the street, and dissecting new stories to understand what makes "the best." Her favorite piece in the book this year is "Market Day."

  Gabby Cabarloc is a senior this fall at Unity High School in Oakland, California. The things she likes to do most include changing her hair color based on the time of year, hanging out with her dog, and procrastinating on her homework. She also likes concerts and browsing antique stores. Her favorite story in this year's book was "Pleiades," because it felt so personal.

  Sophie Chabon has been writing herself bios since the third grade, just waiting for one to be published. Now, as a junior in high school in San Francisco this fall, her sentence construction and diction are much better than when she was younger. As a result of her constant bio writing she has tired of listing her interests, and would instead like to provide the reader of her forty-five thousand nine hundred and thirty-seventh bio with a piece of advice, which she swears is the only advice the reader will ever need. Grow a mustache. (Her favorite story this year is "A Hole in the Head," because it is wonderfully written, and incredibly fun.)

  Gabe Connor lives in San Francisco. Gabe only wears Grandma's leftover Christmas sweaters; flannel is overrated. His new band, the Dronettes, have been described as "Ronnie Spector with Robert Smith's hair, sprinkled with glitter by T. Rex and set on fire by Dee Dee Ramone." Gabe daydreams. He is currently trying to get out of high school, but while he was working on this book, he was a junior at Gateway High School in San Francisco. Now he is a senior. His favorite story in the book was "We Show What We Have Learned," because it made the classroom setting a lot less boring.

  Kitania Folk was a junior while editing this book, and she is a senior now, at Lowell High School in San Francisco. She enjoys brioches, Japanese writers, walking all over San Francisco, and the moment when you know that an experience you've had is going to be a great story. She's been told she's a good storyteller. She believes that people should get to do what they want to. According to the people close to her, she drinks too much coffee, but what can she say, she likes the taste and she does what she wants to. Her favorite piece in this anthology is "Butt and Bhatti," because it shows how sprawling chaos can stem from one specific person's point of pain.

  Sarah Gargaro is a sophomore this fall at Greenhills High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She enjoys sweaters, good books, Latin (but not the verbs), and consuming or concocting delicious food. She's a talented whistler and a Michigan football fan. She also has a birthmark on her back in the shape of a girl chasing a rabbit.

  Evan Greenwald—what a guy. You've somehow already met Evan. He's there, at the back of your head. Think about it. You'll realize you're already in love. You're in love with him and now he's being whisked away to Sarah Lawrence College, eighteen years old, so soon, flashing you the kind of grin that burrows itself into your eye sockets and does a modest little jig. You're clawing after him with your hands, but he's gone. Your hands are hammier than you remember. Jesus. Is it unsettling? To be inexplicably heartbroken over someone in a matter of seconds? It's okay, it's okay. Evan's here. [Editor's note: This bio was written by Paolo Yumol. Evan, a native of the Bay Area, went to Marin School of the Arts in Novato, California, while editing this book. He reports that his favorite story in this year's collection is "The Boys' School," because it "eerily reflected events of my childhood, which makes me feel instant and old."]

  Michelle Grifka is a freshman at the University of Chicago. While editing this collection, she went to high school in Ann Arbor (she doesn't want to say which one). She likes sweet over salty, classical over jazz, and prose over poetry. Her favorite piece is "Best American Adjectives, Nouns, and Verbs Used in Reporting on the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010" for two reasons: One, it shows the funny/ interesting side of a serious issue, and second, it proves that journalism isn't boring after all, but colorful and worth reading.

  Connor Haines is an unpleasantly stereotypical nerd. A native
of Ann Arbor, he is now, as you read these words, attending Cornell College in Iowa. He attended a high school in Ann Arbor, and he refuses to name it. His hobbies include reading, writing, Dungeons and Dragons, video games, making snide comments, and being irritated. Among other eccentricities, Conner eats cake frosting on hamburgers. His favorite piece in the collection is "Market Day," because the quiet dignity and concerns of the protagonist make him very likeable, and the setting for the story is unusual.

  Christian Hernandez is a senior this fall at Unity High School in Oakland. He was born and raised in Oakland. He is an Oaklander, though he would never actually refer to himself this way. He's a musician on the rise. He loves to write poetry, song lyrics, and play any instrument, but especially the guitar. His favorite story this year is "A Hole in the Head," because it's a thriller, and it makes the reader feel like he or she is right there in every scene.