The Best American Magazine Writing 2023 will feature a selection of articles honored by this year's National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media. These awards are sponsored and administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The National Magazine Awards are one of the most prestigious journalism prizes for print and digital media in the United States. More than 300 leading journalists, including the editorial leaders of the most widely read magazines and websites in the country, read more than 1,000 entries and then choose fewer than three dozen feature stories to honor as National Magazine Awards finalists and winners. Originally limited to print magazines, the awards now recognize magazine-quality journalism published in any medium. Each annual anthology includes articles representing a broad range of writing, from hard-hitting investigative reporting and lyrical fiction to eloquent feature writing and incisive cultural criticism Recent anthologies of the Best American Magazine Writing have included work from publications such as The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, GQ, Harper's, Mother Jones, New York, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Wired, as well as from journals and websites like Buzzfeed, Catapult, the Georgia Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, the Marshall Project, The Nation, the Paris Review, Poetry, ProPublica, Public Books, Slate, and Zoetrope: All-Story.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2023 offers a selection of outstanding journalism on timely topics, including inequalities and injustices pressuring families, especially mothers. Rozina Ali tells the story of a U.S. marine who unlawfully adopted an Afghan girl and her family’s efforts to bring her home (New York Times Magazine). A Mother Jones exposé confronts the imprisonment of women for failing to protect their children from their abusive partners. “The Landlord and the Tenant” juxtaposes the lives of a poor single mother convicted for her children’s deaths in a fire and the man who owned the fatal property (ProPublica with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Caitlin Dickerson investigates the history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy (The Atlantic). Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker commentary considers abortion in a post-Roe world. The anthology features pieces on a wide range of subjects, such as Nate Jones on the “Nepo Baby” and Allison P. Davis’s essay about a decade on Tinder (New York). Natalie So recounts how her mother’s small computer chip company became the target of a Silicon Valley crime ring (The Believer). Clint Smith asks what Holocaust memorials in Germany can teach the United States about our reckoning with slavery (The Atlantic). Esquire’s Chris Heath examines the FBI’s involvement in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Courtney Desiree Morris takes a queer psychedelic ramble through New Orleans (Stranger’s Guide). Namwali Serpell reflects on representations of sex workers (New York Review of Books). An ESPN Digital investigation uncovers Penn State’s other serial sexual predator before Jerry Sandusky. Profiles of the acclaimed actress Viola Davis (New York Times Magazine) and the self-taught artist Matthew Wong (New Yorker), as well as Michelle de Kretser’s short story “Winter Term” (Paris Review), round out the volume.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2022 presents a range of outstanding writing on timely topics, from in-depth reporting to incisive criticism: Kristin Canning calls for a change in how we talk about abortion (Women’s Health), and Ed Yong warns us about the next pandemic (The Atlantic). Matthieu Aikins provides a gripping eyewitness account of the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul (New York Times Magazine). Heidi Blake and Katie J. M. Baker’s “Beyond Britney” examines how people placed under legal guardianship are deprived of their autonomy (BuzzFeed News). Rachel Aviv profiles a psychologist who studies the fallibility of memory—and has testified for defendants including Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby (The New Yorker). The anthology includes dispatches from the frontiers of science, exploring why Venus turned out so hellishly unlike Earth (Popular Science) and detailing the potential of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Quanta). It features celebrated writers, including Harper’s magazine pieces by Ann Patchett, whose “These Precious Days” is a powerful story of friendship during the pandemic, and Vivian Gornick, who offers “notes on humiliation.” Carina del Valle Schorske depicts the power of public dance after pandemic isolation (New York Times Magazine). And the NBA icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lauds the Black athletes who fought for social justice (AARP the Magazine). Amid the continuing reckoning with racism, authors reconsider tarnished figures. The Black ornithologist and birder J. Drew Lanham assesses the legacy of John James Audubon in the magazine that bears his name, and Jeremy Atherton Lin questions his youthful enthusiasm for Morrissey (Yale Review). Jennifer Senior writes about memory and the lingering grief felt for a friend killed on 9/11 (The Atlantic). The collection concludes with Nishanth Injam’s story of queer first love across religious boundaries, “Come with Me” (Georgia Review).

The Best American Magazine Writing 2020 brings together outstanding in-depth reporting and incisive criticism. It features extraordinary globe-spanning journalism and showcases the work of remarkable stylists.

In the magazine world, no recognition is more highly coveted than an "Ellie," presentedby the American Society of Magazine Editors. Selected from thousands of submissions, the pieces in this anthology represent the very best of those -- outstanding works by some of the most eminent writers in America: Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit) on living and creating with chronic fatigue syndrome Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) on love and surfing Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on modern torture and the "landscape of persuasion" Seymour M. Hersh (Chain of Command) on the "selective intelligence" used by the White House to justify the war in Iraq Calvin Trillin (The Tummy Trilogy) on his favorite force of nature, the newsman R. W. Apple, Jr. Tucker Carlson (CNN's Crossfire), the "whitest man in America," on a peace mission with Rev. Al Sharpton And many more!

Articles/essays are selected from among the winners of the previous year's National Magazine Awards, presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2021 presents outstanding journalism and commentary that reckon with urgent topics, including COVID-19 and entrenched racial inequality. In “The Plague Year,” Lawrence Wright details how responses to the pandemic went astray (New Yorker). Lizzie Presser reports on “The Black American Amputation Epidemic” (ProPublica). In powerful essays, the novelist Jesmyn Ward processes her grief over her husband’s death against the backdrop of the pandemic and antiracist uprisings (Vanity Fair), and the poet Elizabeth Alexander considers “The Trayvon Generation” (New Yorker). Aymann Ismail delves into how “The Store That Called the Cops on George Floyd” dealt with the repercussions of the fatal call (Slate). Mitchell S. Jackson scrutinizes the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and how running fails Black America (Runner’s World). The anthology features remarkable reporting, such as explorations of the cases of children who disappeared into the depths of the U.S. immigration system for years (Reveal) and Oakland’s efforts to rethink its approach to gun violence (Mother Jones). It includes selections from a Public Books special issue that investigate what 2020’s overlapping crises reveal about the future of cities. Excerpts from Marie Claire’s guide to online privacy examine topics from algorithmic bias to cyberstalking to employees’ rights. Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s perceptive Paris Review columns explore her family history in Detroit and the toll of a brutal past and present. Sam Anderson reflects on a unique pop figure in “The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic” (New York Times Magazine). The collection concludes with Susan Choi’s striking short story “The Whale Mother” (Harper’s Magazine).