The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

<div>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>).</div>