This essay collection on writing, creativity, and identity is just about perfect. Worth it even if you haven't read Chee's other work.
Rebecca
Winter, the second book in the Seasons Quartet, continues in the same vein as Autumn with vignettes about items, events, and people Knausgaard encounters in the season. I found the essays in turns funny, endearing, and haunting. A few of my favorite essays are "Winter Sounds", "Guests", and "Winter Boots".
Heather
Like the music he writes about, Hanif Abdurraqib's essay collection is by turns novel and nostalgic, euphoric and poignant, contemplative and raw. A moving examination of the way pop culture ties into the current state of our nation--and how it affects us on a personal level.
Kate
Tempest Williams is one of my favorite writers (and a fellow Utahn!), and she's at her finest in this collection of essays on America's National Parks. They are personal and political, informative and immediate, a reflection on our messy relationship with wild spaces that's by turns heartbreaking and uplifting. If you're looking for a book to inspire you to get outside this summer, this is the one!
I’m going to say something and you’ll think I’m making this up by I assure you I’m not. Ready? If you read this book you will be moved by descriptions of Marcel Marceau’s acts. Part meditation, part lyrical interpretation, part biography, Wan’s extended consideration of the world’s greatest mime is beautiful weird, like a photograph of a really leggy insect on a sharply outlined twig against a crisp woodland backdrop.
An absolutely brilliant essay collection covering race, motherhood, career, travel, and more. I don't usually take the time to appreciate individual lines in a book, but the sentences here had me stopping to savor each one.
Gladman is one of our most exciting and innovative writers, stretching the boundaries of every genre and style she attempts. Calamities is a collection of short essays about everything from navigating the trivialities of daily life to the very nature of narrative and writing.
Josh
I seldom encounter academic cultural criticism. If the purpose of cultural criticism is inform/outrage/irritate/excite us, and academia's function too often seems to bewilder one with jargon, the two are uneasily conflated. Greif resists such a division, and his essays give us the rare treat of clear writing--a sign of clear thinking--probing deeply into issues about which there is much talk, but rarely enough thought. Clever, articulate, and insightful: the kind of voice you wish appeared in every social conversation.
Matthew
A collection of essays from the poet and (former) children's novelist on everything from hellstrip gardening to finding beauty in word choice.
Sarah
A meditation on travel, literature, writing, politics and culture, The Art of Flight is the long overdue introduction of one of the great living Mexican writers to American readers. Part memoir, part travelogue, part something else, this book is a must for writers and others interested in creativity or thoughtful considerations of ways of being. Also great for fans of The Empathy Exams, The Argonauts, and, oddly, Knaussgaard's My Struggle.
Josh
