Author Description

With a suspicious eye for "the fixed form or the fixed category of any kind," Jamaica Kincaid, this year's guest editor, has assembled a bold assortment of works by some of today's finest prose stylists, including Edward Hoagland, Grace Paley, James A. McPherson, William H. Gass, Cynthia Ozick, John Edgar Wideman, and Joseph Brodsky. Showcased here are preeminent pieces from periodicals such as the Alaska Quarterly Review, Harper's Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Prairie Schooner. Together they bring readers into remarkably diverse realms, from the blues clubs of Chicago to yesteryear's Hollywood Avenue, from the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village to the inviting lushness of a vegetable garden. Topical and trenchant, impertinent and confiding, this wide-ranging display appeals to poetry, social protest, the nuances of language, and even the politics of "good hair," all giving voice to the vibrant dialogue that characterizes American life. Continuing the celebrated tradition, The Best American Essays 1995 dazzles and surprises with its inventive, colorful cornucopia of essays drawn from periodicals across the country. Showcased here are the preeminent pieces from the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and others, written by some of today's finest prose stylists.