The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

This year's <i>Best American Magazine Writing</i> features outstanding writing on contentious issues including incarceration, policing, sexual assault, labor, technology, and environmental catastrophe. Selections include Paul Ford's ambitious "What Is Code?" (<i>Bloomberg Businessweek</i>), an innovative explanation of how programming works, and "The Really Big One," by Kathryn Schulz (<i>The New Yorker</i>), which exposes just how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is for a major earthquake. Joining them are Meaghan Winter's exposé of crisis pregnancy centers (<i>Cosmopolitan</i>) and a chilling story of police prejudice that allowed a serial rapist to run free (the Marshall Project in partnership with <i>ProPublica</i>). Also included is Shane Smith's interview with Barack Obama about mass incarceration (<i>Vice</i>). <br><br>Other selections demonstrate a range of long-form styles and topics across print and digital publications. The imprisoned hacker and activist Barrett Brown pens hilarious dispatches from behind bars, including a scathing review of Jonathan Franzen's fiction (<i>The Intercept</i>). "The New American Slavery" (<i>Buzzfeed</i>) documents the pervasive exploitation of guest workers, and Luke Mogelson explores the purgatorial fate of an undocumented man sent back to Honduras (<i>New York Times Magazine</i>). Joshua Hammer harrowingly portrays Sierra Leone's worst Ebola ward as even the staff succumb to the disease (<i>Matter</i>). And in "The Friend," Matthew Teague's wife is afflicted with cancer, his friend moves in, and the result is a devastating narrative of relationships and death (<i>Esquire</i>). The collection concludes with Jenny Zhang's "How It Feels," an unconventional meditation on the intersection of teenage cruelty and art (<i>Poetry</i>).