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17 Top Publishers of Essay Collections

By Hiten Vyas

Have you written a collection of essays?

Do you now want to publish your work? If so, it makes sense to find a publishing house that has experience in publishing essays.

Continue reading to find out about 17 top publishers of essay collections.

1. Coffee House Press

Coffee House Press is an independent publishing house based in Minneapolis. Founded in 1972, it started out as a small letterpress operation before evolving into an internationally recognized publisher of poetry, essays, and literary fiction. Today, Coffee House Press continues to publish the works of both emerging and established writers, acting as a catalyst between authors and readers.

Coffee House Press has annual reading periods during which they are open for submissions of novels, essay collections, and long-form essays. There is no set length requirement for submissions, but they do not accept single essays, single poems, and chapbooks. Do note that Coffee House Press only accepts 300 submissions per reading period, so make sure you submit as soon as the reading period begins. Visit their Submittable page to learn more about their submission guidelines. For general inquiries, you can reach Coffee House Press here .

2. Red Hen Press

Located in Los Angeles, Red Hen Press was founded by Mark E. Cull and Kate Gale in 1994 out of their desire to keep creative literature alive. And that desire is still the foundation of everything they do—from publishing outstanding literary works, to promoting literacy in local schools. Red Hen Press publishes non-fiction, literary fiction, and poetry—particularly novels, memoirs, essay collections, poetry collections, creative non-fiction, and hybrid works. To get a better idea of the kind of work they usually publish, you can check out their catalog and submission guidelines .

They are currently accepting unsolicited submissions via their Submittable page , and interested authors may submit a completed manuscript or a sample of at least 20 pages. It usually takes them 3 to 6 months to respond to submissions.

3. Two Dollar Radio

Two Dollar Radio is a small, family-run press that has garnered national acclaim since its establishment in 2005. They publish original, creative, and subversive books that defy conventional storytelling. Some of the authors whose work they have published are Hanif Abdurraqib, Barbara Browning, Mark de Silva, Paul Kingsnorth, Janet Livingstone, and more.

They are currently open for submissions through their Submittable page . Submissions must include the full manuscript—no proposals or excerpts. If you are interested in submitting your work, it is important that you familiarize yourself with their previous publications since you will be asked to provide a short statement on why you feel they are the right publisher for your manuscript. You can find more information about their submission guidelines here .

4. Unsolicited Press

Unsolicited Press is a small Oregon-based press that publishes creative non-fiction, literary fiction, and poetry. What sets Unsolicited Press apart from other publishers is that every single person who works there is also a writer, and they consider publishing a partnership between the author and the press. They are always open for submissions, and they are currently actively seeking poetry collections, essay collections, memoirs, novels, and creative non-fiction. They also welcome experimental literature. All submissions must adhere to their submission guidelines , or else they will not be read.

If you are interested in submitting an essay collection, you will need to prepare a query letter and book proposal, along with the first three chapters of your manuscript. Do note that they only accept submissions in Word format. Once you are ready, you can send them your submission via email .

5. Sarabande Books

Sarabande Books is a non-profit press that was founded in 1994. They currently have more than 200 titles in print, and they publish approximately 10 books each year, primarily focusing on fiction, poetry, and essays. They have a dedicated readership and have earned a reputation for publishing innovative books with diverse voices. Authors previously published by Sarabande Books have gone on to win or have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, Lambda Literary Awards, National Book Critics Circle Award, and more.

Their annual reading period for essay collections is during the month of September. They are interested in essay collections between 150 and 250 pages. Individual essays in the collection may have already been published in magazines or chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be previously unpublished. All submissions must follow their guidelines and must be sent through their Submittable page . General inquiries may be sent through Sarabande’s online contact form .

6. Black Lawrence Press

Founded by Colleen Ryor in 2004, Black Lawrence Press is an independent publisher that specializes in fiction, creative non-fiction, and contemporary poetry. The books they publish are distributed to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and various bookstores and retailers across the country. Black Lawrence Press has open reading periods twice a year—one in June and another in November—during which they accept submissions of novels, novellas, prose chapbooks, lyric essay collections, short story collections, biographies, poetry chapbooks, and creative non-fiction.

Black Lawrence Press is quite strict about formatting, so make sure you adhere to the guidelines stated here . If you are ready to send in your submission, you can do so through their Submittable page .

7. Bauhan Publishing

Bauhan Publishing is an independent publishing house with roots going all the way back to the 1930s. It has gone through several different names since its establishment, but its commitment to craftsmanship remains. Even with the rise of on-demand publishing and new media, Bauhan Publishing believes that their traditional publishing model gives them an edge that newer companies don’t have. In addition to publishing high-quality books, Bauhan also hosts the annual Monadnock Essay Collection Prize for book-length collections of non-fiction essays.

Bauhan Publishing does not currently accept unsolicited submissions, but you can visit their Submittable page to stay updated about their upcoming reading periods and contests. If you have any questions for the Bauhan Publishing team, you can reach them here .

8. C&R Press

Since 2006, C&R Press has been publishing exceptional books—especially those written by progressive, LGBTQ, female, minority, immigrant, and submerged voices. Although C&R Press started out as a poetry publisher, they have since expanded their scope and now also publish short story collections, essay collections, novels, and more.

Publishing at least 12 books each year, C&R Press is always eager to receive submissions of full-length manuscripts in any genre. Short stories, essays, memoirs, and hybrid work are all welcome. Should you be interested in getting published by C&R Press, you can view their submission guidelines and submit your manuscript here . If you have any additional questions or concerns, you can reach C&R Press via email .

9. Manchester University Press

Located in the heart of the most vibrant cities in the UK, Manchester University Press publishes study guides, essay collections, multi-authored collections, monographs, and trade books for general readers. Their areas of interest include modern history, history of art and design, sociology, economics, literature, film, archeology, business, politics, international law, and theater.

If your manuscript falls under any of the aforementioned areas, you can submit a proposal to Manchester University Press by emailing the appropriate editor . But before emailing your proposal, make sure you read their submission guidelines . You can also get in touch with Manchester University Press here .

10. Seren Books

One of the leading independent publishers in Wales, Seren Books has been publishing high-quality fiction, non-fiction, and poetry since 1981. Many of the books they have published over the decades have won major literary awards—not only in the UK but internationally as well. It is recommended that you check out their past publications to learn more about the kinds of books they are interested in publishing, but at the core of everything they publish are stories well told.

Seren Books welcomes unsolicited submissions all year. If you are interested in submitting your work for their consideration, you can visit the submissions page on their website.

11. Vehicule Press

Founded in Quebec in 1973, Vehicule Press began as the publishing arm of Vehicule Art, Inc., one of the first artist-run galleries in Canada. Today, Vehicule Press continues to publish non-fiction, fiction, and poetry from Canada’s most talented writers. Some of their award-winning publications include The Love Monster by Missy Marston, A Place in Mind: The Search for Authenticity by Avi Friedman, Garbage Head by Christopher Willard, and Boxing the Compass by Richard Greene.

Vehicule Press is currently accepting non-fiction submissions. Prospective authors can submit their work by visiting the Vehicule Press submissions page and contacting the appropriate editor . General inquiries can be sent to Vehicule Press via email .

12. Book*hug Press

Formerly BookThug Press, Book*hug is an independent literary press in Ontario, Canada that specializes in literary non-fiction, contemporary fiction, poetry, drama, and translations. Their main goal is to publish books that reflect and contribute to Canadian culture and society. In particular, they are looking for writing that is innovative, bold, and not afraid to take risks. They especially welcome work written by LGBTQ writers, women writers, deaf and disabled writers, indigenous writers, and writers of color. They do not, however, publish children’s books, genre fiction, self-help books, or cookbooks.

Book*hug is always open for submissions. If you would like Book*hug to consider your work, you can check out their submission guidelines for instructions on how and where to submit your manuscript. If you require additional assistance, you can reach the Book*hug team here .

13. Guernica Editions

Established in 1978, Guernica Editions is named after the Spanish city that fell victim to aerial bombs in the 1930s. Guernica’s founders chose the name with the hope that the books they publish will change the world and make it a better place. Guernica publishes Canadian literature, specifically fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. One of Guernica’s most significant contributions to the literary world is their promotion of ethnic minority writers including African-Canadian writers, Italian-Canadian writers, and others.

Guernica accepts manuscript submissions between January and April, and they are interested in poetry collections, essay collections, literary non-fiction, and novels. All queries and manuscripts must be sent as attachments via email . To learn more about their process and policies, check out Guernica’s submission guidelines here .

14. House of Anansi

House of Anansi is a Canadian publisher that was founded by writers David Godfrey and Dennis Lee in 1967. They have published the works of renowned Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, Erin Moure, Matt Cohen, and Michael Ondaatje. Today, House of Anansi specializes in publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama from both established and emerging writers. They publish around 50 new titles each year.

House of Anansi is currently closed for submissions, but you can keep an eye out for open calls and upcoming reading periods by checking their Submittable page . They only accept submissions from Canadian writers, and all submissions must be done online. If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach the House of Anansi team here .

15. Giramondo Publishing Company

Giramondo Publishing Company was established in 1995 with the aim of publishing adventurous and innovative literature written by Australian writers. Many of the titles they have published have won major literary prizes, such as the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the Nita Kibble Literary Award. They publish non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and short-form books.

Giramondo is always open for submissions, and they welcome both fiction and non-fiction manuscripts, including essay collections. All submissions must be sent through their Submittable page and must include your curriculum vitae, a brief synopsis of your work, and three sample chapters. For more information, you can find Giramondo’s submission guidelines here .

16. Pan MacMillan Australia

Pan MacMillan Australia is the Australian imprint of MacMillan Publishers, one of the largest and most popular publishing houses in the world. Pan MacMillan Australia publishes a range of high-quality books across various genres, including children’s literature, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, memoirs, and more.

Australian authors who wish to get published can participate in Pan MacMillan’s Manuscript Monday initiative. On the first Monday of every month, Pan MacMillan accepts electronic submissions from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time. At the moment, they are looking for fiction, literary non-fiction, children’s books, young adult literature, and commercial non-fiction. Interested authors can check out Manuscript Monday’s guidelines and submission instructions here . You can also contact Pan MacMillan for general questions and inquiries.

17. Grattan Street Press

Grattan Street Press is a small press located in Melbourne, Australia. An initiative of the University of Melbourne’s Publishing and Communications Program, Grattan Street Press publishes trade non-fiction, contemporary fiction, children’s books, and other culturally significant works. They are especially drawn to writing that is intelligent, engaging, and unique.

They are currently accepting fiction and non-fiction submissions through their Submittable page . Submissions must include your curriculum vitae, a brief summary of your work, and a short excerpt. You can check out their submission guidelines for more details. If you have any questions regarding their submission policies and screening process, you may get in touch with them via email .

Are there any other publishers of essay collection that you know of? Please tell us about them in them in the comments box below!

Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of Writing Tips Oasis .

Need help submitting your writing to literary journals or book publishers/literary agents?  Click here! →

How To Publish A Collection Of Essays

by Writer's Relief Staff | Craft: Short Story Writing , Submit A Book For Publication , Submit A Short Story Or Essay , Submit Your Writing | 7 comments

Review Board is now open! Submit your Short Prose, Poetry, and Book today!

Deadline: thursday, february 22nd.

At Writer’s Relief we are often asked how writers can get their collection of essays published, and we recommend the following tips to help essay writers approach editors and literary agents with greater confidence and success.

How can I generate an editor or agent’s interest in my book of essays?

Publication credits . If you’ve previously published essays in reputable literary journals, make sure to include these credits in your query letter . We highly recommend that you build your publication credits before approaching an editor or agent with a collection of unpublished essays. The market for an essay collection is limited unless you have significantly newsworthy experiences or have a background that proves your writing has mass appeal. Wide publication credits will help indicate readers’ interest in your work.

If you are still in the process of building credits, investigate local venues for your essays—newspapers, newsletters, etc. There are also free specialty publications covering every imaginable topic (check out coffee shops and bookstores) that may be receptive to personal essays). Start locally but aim for national exposure for the best results. If you’ve published a personal essay in a reputable national literary magazine, you’ve increased your odds of selling a collection by quite a bit.

Theme . Collections do well when they include essays with a common theme. For example, David Sedaris is best known for his humorous essays, and C.S. Lewis once published a collection of religious essays. Other themes may include women’s studies, travel, sports, or city life. Unique themes get attention—people love to read about real-life experiences that are highly unusual—but even the most outrageous stories must be backed by good writing.

How can I find editors or literary agents who work with essay collections?

Research, research, research . Study the essay collections at local bookstores and libraries—and don’t forget to investigate the nonfiction areas such as travel, cooking, or parenting. Note who publishes these collections and what kind of essays are selling. Check the books’ acknowledgment pages for possible references to literary agents or editors.

Study book reviews and buy compilations of essays (for example, The Best American Essays ) to learn where each was published. And don’t forget about networking. Writers’ groups, college English departments, conferences—get to know fellow writers and ask questions.

Search for literary agents who welcome essay collections. You can find thousands and thousands of resources online and in bookstores. You’ll need to examine literary agency listings carefully in order to determine which are best for you. And, if you’re short on time, Writer’s Relief can help you. We maintain a database of information—current and constantly updated—to help you target your submissions more successfully. We’ve been helping writers get their work published since 1994.

Interesting, always go the independent route. Learn to believe in your own merit. Take your time when writing. Don’t get into this industry with the mindset that you are going to make copious amount of money. Frankly, the writung industry has been depreciated by too many 2nd-rate writers.

My essay project is “Integral Perspective Of The Human Factor In A Mechanical, Digital World Environment”. It is 14 double-spaced pages, consisting of 7 parts, an introduction, a brief conclusion, and my background. It is a positive response for thought and action in the dehumanizing trend we are living in technology, climate change, education, culture,economy, and interpersonal relations. I want to publish the essay if I can. Whether I receive any compensation is immaterial.

Hi, I am working on editing 20 essays from different writers,they share a main event in their journey which is the theme of the collection. Do you have any advise on how to find a publisher for such a collection¿ Thank you

There are a few options you have. You may find this article about querying for short story collections useful: https://writersrelief.com/2018/05/03/query-letter-genre-essentials-pitching-a-collection-of-short-stories-writers-relief/

Also, we’ve found that submitting your essays individually and having them published in different literary journals increases your chances of getting a collection of them picked up for publication.

My essays have been published individually, but now I want them in one publication without the editor’s having edited out some of my breezy writing style!!! I write on art/artists/events such as the Medici’s at the Met Museum and just about anything I feel like writing. I am published in two online magazines and have been published in print magazines.

I’ve only written one essay so far, but I’m confident that I can develop it into a “series,” so to speak. The essay was my response to a school assignment requesting a story about a tragedy or significant adversity I’d experienced and how I overcame it. I chose to write about my four-month-recent suicide attempt. The detail I went into is truly gut-wrenching, but it is my truth, and I need to live it and speak it unapologetically. I shared my essay with a few other staff members at my school, most of whom have provided me with encouraging feedback. If I were to continue the essay into a series, I would most likely focus on my mental health journey and the incredible ways in which it has impacted me. It’s always been my dream (a rather stubborn one, might I add) to write and publish a book, but I never knew I could publish a collection of essays. Truth be told, I wasn’t aware they were a possibility until very recently; a memoir and a poetry book were really the only ideas I had. But a series of essays compiled under a single main theme seems much more achievable and tolerable, especially at my age (I’m a minor). I haven’t the slightest clue how to go about making this dream into a reality, but I know for certain that I’m willing to try. As ambitious as I am, however, I can’t do it alone; I would greatly appreciate a bit of guidance from anyone willing (and qualified) to give it. I understand that I have a lot to learn – I’ve barely even grazed the surface thus far – but I believe I am fully capable. I’m young, yes; one would assume I have ample time. The hard truth? Life is short. That’s something I’ve already learned time and time again even prior to The Incident. I’ve fought this war my entire life up to this point, and I will never stop fighting it. That’s not okay, not by any means – but most things aren’t, right? As world-shattering as the truths that hide in the dark crawlspaces of Life are, they’re still the truth. They’re still my truths, still my stories. Stories I need to share with the world. There are people out there like me – more than we want to admit – and they need to hear my story. They need to see my strength to find within themselves their own. I am determined to fight as long as I must to give them that, and that fight starts with finding my own Village to help me. So to whoever may read this: if you are willing, capable, and qualified to provide advice or guidance, I ask that you please take a little time to do so, and I in turn will give you my time. Thank you to all who read this, and thank you to Writer’s Relief for giving me the space and opportunity to share.

Hi Isabella,

Thank you for reaching out to us, and for sharing your journey with us.

We recommend taking a look at our free publishing toolkit. There are numerous articles about writing, publishing, finding an agent, etc. https://writersrelief.com/free-publishing-resources-toolkit-for-writers/

We also think the following articles might be helpful: https://writersrelief.com/how-to-write-about-trauma-in-your-memoir-writers-relief/ and https://writersrelief.com/how-to-write-a-personal-essay-worth-publishing-writers-relief/

We hope these resources will help you with your writing journey.

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15 Small Presses Accepting Manuscripts Right Now

• March 1, 2021
• Allie Rigby

Looking for places to submit your work? Here is a list of small presses that are currently accepting work to review. Before diving into that list, there is a little context about small presses and how to go about the process of submitting your work. You can also scroll to the end of the article to get to the list of 15 places that are open to your submissions.

Feel free to add a comment at the end if you know of more places that are also accepting submissions right now. The team at Elyssar Press would love to hear from you!

What Are Small Presses?

Small press, independent press, and indie publisher are often terms that are used interchangeably. Technically, small presses are publishing houses with annual sales below a certain number, that number being $50 million in the US.* They also likely publish fewer books per year than larger presses, usually less than 10 books per year or so. This distinguishes small presses from the giant publishing houses that control a lot of the market, roughly 80% of the market in America, for example.**

Small presses are one key part of keeping the literary scene inclusive, diverse, and vibrant since they offer more voices in the selection process of what gets published. For more on the importance of small presses, check out Why American Literature Needs Small Presses , published in The Atlantic by Nathan Scott McNamara.

Small Presses can also be called independent presses when they are not tied to a larger publishing house, such as Penguin or Random House; however, there is some discrepancy here. Some independent presses do not call themselves small presses but call themselves independent presses, usually producing more books per year than small presses, but not always. It’s a bit of a grey area. Some presses also operate as part of a nonprofit, to help cover basic costs since they do not have the funding and profits that the Big 5 publishing houses often have.

Some famous small presses you may be familiar with are Graywolf Press, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, and Tin House.

15 Small Presses Accepting Submissions Right Now

So you are ready to submit your work! Be sure to do some basic research on the press before you hit “send” on anything and that your work is in its final form. Lots of presses will not accept an “updated version” of your manuscript; for example, if one month after submitting, you want them to consider the newer version, many places will not.

Basic research here can mean a few things. Do you know if the press accepts work from your genre? Does your work align with the general goals or mission of the press? Does the press accept simultaneous submissions? This will help you narrow your final choices down and target presses that are better potential matches for publishing your work. If you don’t know where to start on this research, you can start by exploring each press’s “About” page and seeing the works that they have published thus far.

Please add any other tips for submissions to the comments below!

And now, the 15 small presses currently open for submissions:

• 3: A Taos Press – This publishing press looks to “[…] writers of all cultures.” There is no reading fee, however, it is encouraged to have an agent. You can learn more about their submissions process on their website as well as see manuscripts they have published thus far. The editors are currently looking for poetry manuscripts at this time.
• Assure Press – Assure Press publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. According to their website, this press is about connecting, “[…] authors and artists with the world through inspirational and enlightening poetry, non-fiction, motivational, and educational literature.” Learn more about their submissions process here .
• Backbone Press – Since 2012, Backbone Press has been looking “to publish and support writers of color.” Their press was started as a response to the lack of diversity within publishing and the idea that “every voice is essential.” They are rarely open for manuscripts outside of their contests. March 5th, 2021 is the last day for their chapbook competition! You can review their submissions process here .
• Digitus Indie Publishers – This press is accepting submissions from now through July 31st, 2021. The upcoming issue is called Contrapuntos IX and accepted languages for publication are English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician. Academic articles, poetry, creative essays, and photography are welcome. You can view their submissions requirements here .
• Elyssar Press – Article update : As of April 2021, Elyssar Press has paused submissions after receiving a large amount of manuscripts. Please check back with us in the fall of 2021, when we open submissions again! At that point, you can submit your original manuscript for review, and we will get back to you within 2 months. Elyssar Press focuses on poetry, short stories, biographies, and art. We currently publish in English, Spanish, French (in paper and ebook format), and Arabic in ebook format. To learn more, please review our submissions process .
• Foglifter Journal – This publication offers “[…] a space where queer and trans writers celebrate, mourn, rage, and embrace . ” While Foglifter Press is not currently accepting manuscripts right now, their literary journal is! Cover art is accepted year-round. Learn more about their submission process here for their fall issue.
• Galileo Press – Keep this nonprofit book publisher that was funded in 1979 on your list if you have novellas, short story collections, and more. While their submissions are currently closed for full manuscripts, their literary magazine is still open and publishes two issues a year. Learn more about their submissions .
• Heyday Books – In their own words, “Heyday is an independent, nonprofit publisher with a focus on California and the American West.” Their focus is on “[…] nonfiction books that explore history, celebrate Native cultural renewal, fight injustice, and honor nature.” You can learn more about their submissions process here .
• Jacar Press – Whether you have a poem for their online magazine or a manuscript for an upcoming chapbook, you might want to consider this small press. Their full-length and chapbook submissions are open until April 30th, 2021. There is an entry fee. You do not need an agent to submit. Learn more here .
• Lavendar Ink / Diálogos – Poetry, fiction, cultural criticism (including translation), and nonfiction are welcome at this press. They prefer your query to include “the entire manuscript plus a cover letter with project description and CV.” For a sense of their publications, check out their online shop. You can learn more here .
• Paloma Press – Based in the Bay Area, this press is an “[…] independent literary press publishing poetry, prose, and limited edition books.” Like any small press, it is recommended to review their previously published titles and see if your work would be a good fit. Please review their submissions requirements before submitting your work.
• Somos en Escrito – Writers with an indigenous-Hispanic background are encouraged to submit their work right now to Somos en Escrito! According to their website, this publication, “[…] invites U.S. American writers of Chicano, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Hispanic origin, to submit manuscripts […]” at this time. To learn more, check out their submission process .
• Tolsun Books – This small press invites you to judge their books by their covers, because their covers are fantastic. They are looking for manuscripts to publish in 2022. Short story collections, poetry, essay collections, translations, and hybrid works. Their submissions period is open March 1st through May 31st. Learn about how to submit here .
• Unicorn Press – This press focuses on chapbooks and poetry collections. They have two open reading periods: the fall reading period between October 1st and December 31st, and the spring period between April 1st and to June 30th. Learn more about how to submit here .
• University of Iowa Press – The month of April is the time to submit for their Iowa Poetry Prize that publishes a full-length manuscript. Proposals for academic works often require a CV, project description, and contact information, and these proposals are open year-round. Click here to learn more.

What are you waiting for? Send your manuscripts in! This is an open call. Let us know in the comments if you have other presses, or share this article with a fellow writer who is hoping to submit their work.

*Wikipedia, Small Press , article available here .

**Nathan Scott McNamara, American Literature Needs Small Presses, article available here .

Additional Resources:

• Poets and Writers – submissions listserv .
• Community of Literary Magazines and Presses – submissions listserv .
• Independent Book Publishers Association – book industry events for indie publishers.

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4 Insightful New Essay Collections

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4 New Agents Seeking Memoir, Short Story Collections, Literary and Commercial Fiction, Horror, Kidlit and more

Erica Verrillo

Curiosity Never Killed the Writer

H ere are four new agents actively building their client lists. Siobhan McBride specializes in literary and commercial fiction — including mystery and crime, suspense, and psychological horror — and narrative nonfiction, including memoir. She is interested in reading about marginalized voices, strong females, gender issues (men and women), class divide, mental health issues, self-help and psychology, as well as dystopian themes and fantastic fiction.

Sophie Pugh-Sellers is looking for both fiction and nonfiction projects, particularly innovative takes on classical narrative elements and stories told by radical new voices. Arlie Johansen is interested in literary fiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and feminist nonfiction. She particularly enjoys short story and essay collections, and both fiction and nonfiction that elevates traditionally underrepresented voices. Larissa Melo Pienkowski is seeking picture books, YA, speculative fiction, magical realism, memoir, narrative nonfiction, cookbooks, and poetry.

Always check the agency website and agent bio before submitting. Agents can switch agencies or close their lists, and submission requirements can change.

You can find a full list of agents actively seeking new clients here: Agents Seeking Clients .

___________________________

Siobhan McBride of Carnicelli Literary Management

Siobhan McBride, associate agent, joined CLM in 2020, after having held positions at Sobel Weber Associates and Serendipity Literary Agency and internships at W.W. Norton and Writers House. At Serendipity, she gained a thorough knowledge of young adult literature, nonfiction health, advice, and how-to, and mystery and crime fiction. At Sobel Weber, she built on her love of mystery, crime, and literary fiction and developed an interest in psychology and fantasy fiction, working with Southern crime fiction authors Tom Franklin and Brian Panowich, crime/science fiction author Dan Stout, and mystery writer Peter Swanson.

What she is seeking : Siobhan specializes in literary and commercial fiction — including mystery and crime, suspense, and psychological horror — and narrative nonfiction, including memoir. She is interested in reading about marginalized voices, strong females, gender issues (men and women), class divide, mental health issues, self-help and psychology, as well as dystopian themes and fantastic fiction. She especially loves finding stories that haunt her (physically/philosophically/spiritually) for weeks after reading.

How to submit : Please use the form HERE .

Ms. Sophie Pugh-Sellers of The Gernert Company

Sophie joined The Gernert Company in 2019, and holds a BA in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Barnard College. Raised in Oakland, California and Charlottesville, Virginia, her literary palate is as eclectic and complex as her two hometowns. All of her favorite writing includes characters, language, and worlds so powerful that she misses them long after closing the book. She lives in Washington Heights.

What she is seeking : She is looking for both fiction and nonfiction projects, particularly innovative takes on classical narrative elements and stories told by radical new voices.

How to submit : Queries by e-mail should be directed to: [email protected]. Please indicate in your letter which agent you are querying.

Arlie Johansen of Aevitas

Arlie Johansen graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a BA in English, and minors in Journalism and Creative Writing. She joined Aevitas in 2019, after attending the Columbia Publishing Course in 2017 and subsequently interning at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Soho Press, and the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency.

What she is seeking : Arlie is interested in literary fiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and feminist nonfiction. She particularly enjoys short story and essay collections, and both fiction and nonfiction that elevates traditionally underrepresented voices.

How to submit : Use Arlie’s form HERE .

Larissa Melo Pienkowski of Jill Grinberg Literary Management

Larissa Melo Pienkowski grew up outside of Boston and attended Simmons University, where she earned her degree in Social Work and Sociology, performed poetry competitively and recreationally, and edited a number of literary magazines. Larissa later went on to receive her MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College, where she worked with the likes of Beacon Press and Barefoot Books, before becoming the assistant publisher of a small indie press. She joined Jill Grinberg Literary Management in 2020 and is now working to build her list. The daughter of Brazilian and Polish immigrants, Larissa speaks Portuguese and Spanish and travels to experience as much of the world as possible — always with a good book in hand

What she is seeking : In fiction, she is looking for character-driven, idiosyncratic stories that center underrepresented voices; braided, multigenerational narratives that make her cry; powerful stories of migration, diaspora, and displacement; haunting, atmospheric speculative fiction and magical realism in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, respectively; modern re-imaginings of mythology for adult and YA readers; quirky coming-of-age stories about identity and the gritty yet relatable parts of life; and well-researched historical fiction that immerses her in another world. She has a soft spot for novels that stretch the boundaries and limitations of genre.

On the non-fiction side, she is seeking emotionally searing memoirs from underrepresented perspectives; journalistic reporting that blends seamlessly with personal narrative; cookbooks that feature diverse cuisines; essay collections that chronicle contemporary life through the lens of social justice; niche cultural history and criticism; and radically transformative spiritual/self-help titles.

Larissa likes poetry that addresses contemporary themes while striking her in the heart. She is also open to funny, whimsical picture books in which children can see a reflection of themselves.

As an advocate for authors from marginalized communities, Larissa is especially interested in representing diverse voices and experiences across all genres.

How to submit : Please submit to info@ jillgrinbergliterary.com

Your email subject line should follow this general format: QUERY: Title of Project by Your Name / Age Category/Genre / ATTN: Name of Agent.

Please paste your query letter in the body of the email and attach your materials as a docx. file.

For all fiction submissions, please send a query letter and the first fifty (50) pages of your manuscript. If we are interested in reading more, we will reach out to request the full manuscript.

For all nonfiction submissions, please send a query letter and complete proposal. Your nonfiction proposal should include a project overview or outline, proposed chapter summaries, comparable titles, a sample chapter, your biography, and a bibliography of any additional works. You may also include promotional ties/materials if relevant.

Picture book submissions should include the full text. If you are working with an illustrator or have illustrated your own book, please provide full-color images or the fully illustrated text. If applicable, you can provide a link to the illustrator’s online portfolio or website.

Like this article? For more articles about the publishing world, useful tips on how to get an agent, agents who are looking for clients, how to market and promote your work, building your online platform, how to get reviews, self-publishing, as well as publishers accepting manuscripts directly from writers (no agent required) visit Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity .

Written by Erica Verrillo

Helping writers get published and bolstering their flagging spirits at http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/

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20 Brilliant Essay Collections

Essay collections exist in a kind of literary no-man’s-land. They’re non-fiction, but they don’t often slip neatly into a particular category (like “science” or “history”). Often, they draw from the author’s own life, but they don’t follow the chronology we expect of a memoir or autobiography . But if you can figure out where they’re shelved in your local independent bookshop, essay collections can make for some of the best reads. Check out these twenty brilliant essay collections, from all kinds of authors about all kinds of subjects.

Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit

Men Explain Things To Me is a slim little essay collection with a provocative title and a brilliant premise. Rebecca Solnit writes about the lived experience of women in the patriarchy in seven essays (or nine, if you get a later edition) from the last twenty years. She addresses violence against women, marriage equality, the influence of Virginia Woolf, the erasure of women from the archive, fraught online spaces, and more. Solnit was even credited with coining the term “mansplaining” – even though the word itself doesn’t appear in the title essay, and she later said she didn’t necessarily agree with such a gendered term.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a once-in-a-generation literary darling, writing beloved fiction and brilliant non-fiction with the same zeal. In Feel Free , her 2018 essay collection, she addresses questions we all find ourselves pondering from time to time. Why do we love libraries? How will we explain our inaction on climate change to future generations? What are online social networks doing to us? Her answers are categorised in the book’s five sections: In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free (from which the essay collection gets its name). Smith interrogates major world-changing events and small personal disruptions with equal fascination, which makes for an illuminating read.

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay has built a career on being forthright, unabashed, and holding a microphone to the best and worst of the little voices in our heads. Bad Feminist is a collection of her essays, most published individually elsewhere prior to the 2014 release, grouped thematically. They’re all loosely tied to the overarching ideas of feminism and womanhood, what it means to do it well, and what the consequences are for doing it badly. As the title suggests, in one of the collection’s most memorable moments, she addresses the difficulty of reconciling her feminism with her love of hip-hop music and the colour pink. She contends throughout this essay collection that it’s better to be a ‘bad feminist’ than to be no kind of feminist at all. Read my full review of Bad Feminist here.

Shrill by Lindy West

Have you ever felt like you just take up too much space in a world that wants you to be small and quiet? Lindy West has, and that’s what she writes in Shrill , the first of her hilarious and insightful essay collections. She lays bear the shame and humiliation that comes with the journey to self-awareness and self-acceptance, in a world that insists you be smaller and quieter. West has battled internet trolls, waged war against rape jokes, and reached an uneasy accord with her unruly body and mind. These essays are brilliant, relatable and hilarious for all women who have felt like they didn’t quite fit.

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel seems like an odd title for an essay collection, but it makes sense once you hear Alexander Chee’s explanation behind it. On book tours and at speaking events regarding his novels, he found himself facing the same question over and over: “how much of this fictional story is autobiographical?”. He started thinking about how we forge identities in literature, giving rise to this brilliant collection of essays. It’s his “manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him”.

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Samantha Irby describes herself as a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person… with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees… who still hides past due bills under her pillow”. Wow, No Thank You a collection of her essays about… stuff. Life. Ridiculous jobs. Trying to make friends as an adult. The lost art of making a mix-tape. Living in a place where most people don’t share your politics. Getting your period and bleeding all over the sheets of your Airbnb. Trying to remember why you ever found nightclubs fun. There’s even a whole essay of “Sure, sex is fun, but have you ever…” jokes (the format might mystify you if you’re not on Twitter , but it’s hilarious). Read my full review of Wow, No Thank You here.

Dead Girls by Alice Bolin

Are you sick of the trope where a nice, skinny, white girl shows up dead and that’s all we ever get to know about her? You’re not the only one. Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls interrogates “iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories”. This is one of those essay collections that will stick with you, and change the way you consume stories forever.

If you want alternatives to read, check out my list of crime thrillers without dead girls here .

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Jia Tolentino has been called “a peerless voice of our generation” and a “Joan Didion of our time”. Trick Mirror is one of the most critically acclaimed essay collections of recent years, a “dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays… [that] delves into the forces that warp our vision”. Have you ever wondered why we think what we do and the way we do? Normally, that’s the kind of question we’d leave to marketing professionals and moral philosophy professors, but Tolentino addresses it in an accessible and relatable way. She wants us to understand what advertising, social media, consumerism, and the whole she-bang has done to our consciousness and our understanding of ourselves.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

I’ll confess: David Foster Wallace is kind of my literary secret shame. The man was hardly a paragon of virtue, he treated the women in his life horribly, and he clearly had a lot of troubles that were never adequately addressed. But damn, if his essays aren’t some of the funniest I’ve ever read! Seriously, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is one of those brilliant essay collections that will have you howling with laughter so loud your neighbours might call the cops. Wallace is, at turns, cynical, curious, credulous, and cutting – and yet his essays feel seamless. They’re long, they’re stuffed with footnotes that would make a lit professor weep, and yet you’ll read them feeling like no time is passing at all because you’re having so much fun. I can’t speak for his fiction, but his essay collections? Must-reads, especially this one!

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Any library of brilliant essay collections is woefully incomplete without David Sedaris, especially his 2000 collection Me Talk Pretty One Day . It’s over twenty years old, and yet it’s still as pertinent and resonant as ever. Sedaris’s wry humour and keen observations, of everything from family life to travel to cooking to education, are timeless. It’s truly masterful, a kind of comic genius you don’t see everyday. It’s also a great read for when your attention span is shot. The essays are short enough that you can read the whole thing in bite-sized chunks, but the through-line is strong enough that it will keep pulling you back in. Read my full review of Me Talk Pretty One Day here.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

I find it hard not to build up a head of steam when I talk about Nora Ephron, because she is criminally underrated. Because she wrote about women and their relationships (to each other and themselves), instead of men with businesses or guns, she’s relegated to the “chick lit” and “rom-com” shelves, described as “fluffy” instead of ingenious. Want proof? Pick up I Feel Bad About My Neck , one of the most brilliant and incisive essay collections you’ll read anywhere. With her trademark candour and dry humour, she tackles the unspeakable: aging as a woman in a society that values perpetual youth.

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen

Scan the headlines of any celebrity gossip website, and you’ll notice: times have changed. We’re a long way from Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. The women of today’s front pages are boundary pushers, provocative and powerful in ways that women of previous generations wouldn’t dare dream about. Anne Helen Petersen has had a lot of cause to study these women in her role as a Buzzfeed editor, and she’s written Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud to explain what she’s seen. She “uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of powerhouses like Serena Williams, Hillary Clinton, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures”.

All About Love by bell hooks

“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks in All About Love, one of her most widely-read and lauded essay collections. She posits that our society is descending into lovelessness. Not romantic lovelessness – we’re drowning in smooches – but the kind where we lack basic compassion and empathy for each other, and ourselves. We are divided and discontented, due to “society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love”. You’ll want to set aside a lot of time to read and think about this one, to really absorb its message – if you do, it’ll change your life.

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race is Eddo-Lodge’s first essay collection. It started with her blog post of the same name that she published back in 2014, but there’s no need to go trawling the internet for it: Eddo-Lodge reproduces it in full in the preface. It serves as a thesis statement, framing and contextualising everything that is to follow. So, the $64,000 question: why isn’t Eddo-Lodge talking to white people about race? Well, basically, she’s fed up: with white denial, with white self-flagellation, with trying to shake hands with a brick wall. Ironically, this is a collection of essays about race and racism that every white person should absolutely read. Read my full review of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race here.

Rogues by Patrick Radden Keefe

If you loved Say Nothing and Empire Of Pain (like I did), you’ll be overjoyed (as I was) to get your hands on a copy of Rogues , a collection of Patrick Radden Keefe’s most celebrated essays from The New Yorker . These delightfully detailed investigative pieces focus on his favourite subjects: “crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial”. They’re like delectable bite-sized true crime tales, all meticulously researched and fact-checked so as to ensure they’re completely believable. Each and every one is masterfully crafted, perfectly balanced, and totally gripping. Read my full review of Rogues here.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

The best essay collections combine both sweeping views of the way we live our lives and the minutiae of how the author lives their own. How To Be A Woman is the perfect example. Caitlin Moran interrogates what it means to be a woman in the 21st century, with broad observations as well as deeply personal (not to mention riotously funny) anecdotes. From abortions to Brazilian waxes to pop culture to reproduction, Moran explores the opportunities and constraints for women in all areas of life. She “lays bare the reasons why female rights and empowerment are essential issues not only for women today but also for society itself”.

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

When you think about it, essay collections are a medium well suited to the millennial generation, with our attention spans ruined by television and our ingrained narcissism and all. Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love is to our generation what Bridget Jones’s Diary was to the Gen Xers. In it, she writes about contemporary young adulthood and all its essential components: “falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends”.

Figuring by Maria Popova

If you’ve ever Googled any kind of lofty question – what did Toni Morrison say makes life worth living? is stoicism a solution to anxiety? what the heck is a ‘growth mindset’? – chances are you’ve stumbled upon BrainPickings.org (now renamed The Marginalian). The mind behind the brilliant website is Maria Popova, and while her online archives constitute about a hundred essay collections’ worth of material, she’s condensed her best and made her contribution in the form of Figuring . This one is a must-read for the literary nerds and the philosophy students and the history buffs. It features snippets and essential lessons from the lives of figures like Herman Melville , Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin

It took Maria Tumarkin nine years to research and write Axiomatic , one of the most powerful essay collections you’ll encounter at your local independent bookstore. She seeks to understand grief, loss, and trauma, and how they inform who we are as people. So, as you can probably already tell, it’s not exactly a light read – but if you’re in the mood to do some deep thinking, it’s an excellent selection. Each of its five sections is based on an axiom about the past and present (like “history repeats itself” or “time heals all wounds”), and examines true stories from Tumarkin’s own life and those around her to illustrate her wider points.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The problem with essay collections about successful people is that too many of them are of the “here’s how you can be successful too, invest in this stock and get rich quick!” variety. Outliers is the exception (and you have no idea how hard it was not to call it an ‘outlier’ just now). Malcolm Gladwell takes an intellectual look at the best and the brightest, the shining stars of innovation and industry, with the aim of finding out what exactly makes them different. This isn’t just about waking up early or taking cold showers; there are very specific concoctions of culture, community, and cunning that get people to the very top of the game, and Gladwell lays them out for us.

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Features & Discussion

Previous post

November 26, 2022 at 1:54 AM

Wow this is such a great list and now I want to read them all? I have, in fact, read a handful of them – but am adding a whole bunch more to my wishlist.

Some brilliant essay collections I’ve read in recent years are Notes To Self by Emilie Pine, Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth, Miss Fortune by Lauren Weedman, How We Love by Clementine Ford. Notes From No-Man’s Land by Eula Biss is uneven, but the first essay in it is unforgettable. It’s only now that I realise I apparently never read essay collections by men…

December 13, 2022 at 9:16 PM

Interesting, I was fifty-fifty on whether I’d check out How We Love, but your commendation is definitely weighing the scale in its favour! Thank you 😀

December 3, 2022 at 2:47 PM

A favorite genre of mine that I don’t read enough in. Bookmarking this post for future reference. (One of my favorite essayists is C.S. Lewis, the master philosopher and apologist IMHO.)

Oooh! I’ve not read any of C.S. Lewis’s essay, great tip Hannah – I’ll be keeping an eye out for them!

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020

Featuring zadie smith, helen macdonald, claudia rankine, samantha irby, and more.

Zadie Smith’s Intimations , Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights , Claudia Rankine’s Just Us , and Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You all feature among the Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020.

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Grove)

18 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Read Helen Macdonald on Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road  here

“A former historian of science, Macdonald is as captivated by the everyday (ants, bird’s nests) as she is by the extraordinary (glowworms, total solar eclipses), and her writing often closes the distance between the two … Always, the author pushes through the gloom to look beyond herself, beyond all people, to ‘rejoice in the complexity of things’ and to see what science has to show us: ‘that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us’ … The climate crisis shadows these essays. Macdonald is not, however, given to sounding dire, all-caps warnings … For all its elegiac sentences and gray moods, Vesper Flights  is a book of tremendous purpose. Throughout these essays, Macdonald revisits the idea that as a writer it is her responsibility to take stock of what’s happening to the natural world and to convey the value of the living things within it.”

–Jake Cline  ( The Washington Post )

2. Intimations by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

13 Rave • 7 Positive • 3 Mixed

Listen to Zadie Smith read from Intimations here

“Smith…is a spectacular essayist—even better, I’d say, than as a novelist … Smith…get[s] at something universal, the suspicion that has infiltrated our interactions even with those we want to think we know. This is the essential job of the essayist: to explore not our innocence but our complicity. I want to say this works because Smith doesn’t take herself too seriously, but that’s not accurate. More to the point, she is willing to expose the tangle of feelings the pandemic has provoked. And this may seem a small thing, but it’s essential: I never doubt her voice on the page … Her offhandedness, at first, feels out of step with a moment in which we are desperate to feel that whatever something we are trying to do matters. But it also describes that moment perfectly … Here we see the kind of devastating self-exposure that the essay, as a form, requires—the realization of how limited we are even in the best of times, and how bereft in the worst.”

–David L. Ulin  ( The Los Angeles Times )

3. Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed

Read an excerpt from Just Us here

“ Just Us  is about intimacy. Rankine is making an appeal for real closeness. She’s advocating for candor as the pathway to achieving universal humanity and authentic love … Rankine is vulnerable, too. In ‘lemonade,’ an essay about how race and racism affect her interracial marriage, Rankine models the openness she hopes to inspire. ‘lemonade’ is hard to handle. It’s naked and confessional, deeply moving and, ultimately, inspirational … Just Us , as a book, is inventive … Claudia Rankine may be the most human human I’ve ever encountered. Her inner machinations and relentless questioning would exhaust most people. Her labor should be less necessary, of course.”

–Michael Kleber-Diggs  ( The Star Tribune )

4. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World)

7 Rave • 10 Positive • 2 Mixed

Listen to an interview with Cathy Park Hong here

“Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured … I read Minor Feelings  in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch … The question of lovability, and desirability, is freighted for Asian men and Asian women in very different ways—and Minor Feelings  serves as a case study in how a feminist point of view can both deepen an inquiry and widen its resonances to something like universality … Hong reframes the quandary of negotiating dominance and submission—of desiring dominance, of hating the terms of that dominance, of submitting in the hopes of achieving some facsimile of dominance anyway—as a capitalist dilemma … Hong is writing in agonized pursuit of a liberation that doesn’t look white—a new sound, a new affect, a new consciousness—and the result feels like what she was waiting for. Her book is a reminder that we can be, and maybe have to be, what others are waiting for, too.”

–Jia Tolentino  ( The New Yorker )

5. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Milkweed Editions)

11 Rave • 3 Positive

Read an excerpt from World of Wonders here

“In beautifully illustrated essays, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes of exotic flora and fauna and her family, and why they are all of one piece … In days of old, books about nature were often as treasured for their illustrations as they were for their words. World of Wonders,  American poet and teacher Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s prose ode to her muses in the natural world, is a throwback that way. Its words are beautiful, but its cover and interior illustrations by Fumi Mini Nakamura may well be what first moves you to pick it up in a bookstore or online … The book’s magic lies in Nezhukumatathil’s ability to blend personal and natural history, to compress into each brief essay the relationship between a biographical passage from her own family and the life trajectory of a particular plant or animal … Her kaleidoscopic observations pay off in these thoughtful, nuanced, surprise-filled essays.”

–Pamela Miller  ( The Star Tribune )

6. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (Vintage)

10 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Watch an interview with Samantha Irby here

“Haphazard and aimless as she claims to be, Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You  is purposefully hilarious, real, and full of medicine for living with our culture’s contradictory messages. From relationship advice she wasn’t asked for to surrendering her cell phone as dinner etiquette, Irby is wholly unpretentious as she opines about the unspoken expectations of adulting. Her essays poke holes and luxuriate in the weirdness of modern society … If anyone whose life is being made into a television show could continue to keep it real for her blog reading fans, it’s Irby. She proves we can still trust her authenticity not just through her questionable taste in music and descriptions of incredibly bloody periods, but through her willingness to demystify what happens in any privileged room she finds herself in … Irby defines professional lingo and describes the mundane details of exclusive industries in anecdotes that are not only entertaining but powerfully demystifying. Irby’s closeness to financial and physical precariousness combined with her willingness to enter situations she feels unprepared for make us loyal to her—she again proves herself to be a trustworthy and admirable narrator who readers will hold fast to through anything at all.”

–Molly Thornton  ( Lambda Literary )

7. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing (W. W. Norton & Company)

5 Rave • 10 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Yes, you’re in for a treat … There are few voices that we can reliably read widely these days, but I would read Laing writing about proverbial paint drying (the collection is in fact quite paint-heavy), just as soon as I would read her write about the Grenfell Tower fire, The Fire This Time , or a refugee’s experience in England, The Abandoned Person’s Tale , all of which are included in Funny Weather … Laing’s knowledge of her subjects is encyclopaedic, her awe is infectious, and her critical eye is reminiscent of the critic and author James Wood … She is to the art world what David Attenborough is to nature: a worthy guide with both a macro and micro vision, fluent in her chosen tongue and always full of empathy and awe.”

–Mia Colleran  ( The Irish Times )

8. Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

6 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan

“A] searing look at the struggle for all Americans to achieve liberty and equality. Lalami eloquently tacks between her experiences as an immigrant to this country and the history of U.S. attempts to exclude different categories of people from the full benefits of citizenship … Lalami offers a fresh perspective on the double consciousness of the immigrant … Conditional citizenship is still conferred on people of color, women, immigrants, religious minorities, even those living in poverty, and Lalami’s insight in showing the subtle and overt ways discrimination operates in so many facets of life is one of this book’s major strengths.”

–Rachel Newcomb  ( The Washington Post )

9. This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah (University of Georgia Press)

7 Rave • 2 Positive 

Watch an interview with Sejal Shah here

“Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an ‘exotic’ name, when the only country you’ve ever lived in is America … The essays in this slim volume are engaging and thought-provoking … The essays are well-crafted with varying forms that should inspire and enlighten other essayists … A particularly delightful chapter is the last, called ‘Voice Texting with My Mother,’ which is, in fact, written in texts … Shah’s thoughts on heritage and belonging are important and interesting.”

–Martha Anne Toll  ( NPR )

10. Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (Riverhead)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed

Read Eula Biss on the anticapitalist origins of Monopoly here

“… enthralling … Her allusive blend of autobiography and criticism may remind some of The Argonauts  by Maggie Nelson, a friend whose name pops up in the text alongside those of other artists and intellectuals who have influenced her work. And yet, line for line, her epigrammatic style perhaps most recalls that of Emily Dickinson in its radical compression of images and ideas into a few chiseled lines … Biss wears her erudition lightly … she’s really funny, with a barbed but understated wit … Keenly aware of her privilege as a white, well-educated woman who has benefited from a wide network of family and friends, Biss has written a book that is, in effect, the opposite of capitalism in its willingness to acknowledge that everything she’s accomplished rests on the labor of others.”

–Ann Levin  ( Associated Press )

The Book Marks System: RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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8 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Our fiction recommendations this week include a “gleeful romp” of a series mystery, along with three novels by some heavy-hitting young writers: Téa Obreht, Helen Oyeyemi and Tommy Orange. (How heavy-hitting, and how young? Consider that Obreht was included in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” issue in 2010 — and she’s still under 40 today. So is Oyeyemi, who was one of Granta’s “Best Young British Novelists” in 2013, while Orange, at 42, has won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John Leonard Prize and the American Book Award. The future is in good hands.)

In nonfiction, we recommend a painter’s memoir, a group biography of three jazz giants, a posthumous essay collection by the great critic Joan Acocella and a journalist’s look at American citizens trying to come to terms with a divided country. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

THE MORNINGSIDE Téa Obreht

After being displaced from their homeland, Silvia and her mother move into the Morningside, a weather-beaten luxury apartment building in “Island City,” a sinking version of New York in the middle of all-out climate collapse. Silvia learns about her heritage through the folk tales her aunt Ena tells her, and becomes fascinated with the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse apartment.

“I marveled at the subtle beauty and precision of Obreht’s prose. … Even in the face of catastrophe, there’s solace to be found in art.”

From Jessamine Chan’s review

Random House | $29

A GRAVE ROBBERY Deanna Raybourn

In their ninth crime-solving tale, the Victorian-era adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell and her partner discover that a wax mannequin is actually a dead young woman, expertly preserved.

“Throw in an assortment of delightful side characters and an engaging tamarin monkey, and what you have is the very definition of a gleeful romp.”

From Sarah Weinman’s crime column

Berkley | $28

THE BLOODIED NIGHTGOWN: And Other Essays Joan Acocella

Acocella, who died in January, may have been best known as one of our finest dance critics. But as this posthumous collection shows, she brought the same rigor, passion and insight to all the art she consumed. Whether her subject is genre fiction, “Beowulf” or Marilynne Robinson, Acocella’s knowledge and enthusiasm are hard to match. We will not see her like again.

"Some critics are haters, but Acocella began writing criticism because she loved — first dance, and then much of the best of Western culture. She let life bring her closer to art."

From Joanna Biggs’s review

Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $35

WANDERING STARS Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

“Orange’s ability to highlight the contradictory forces that coexist within friendships, familial relationships and the characters themselves ... makes ‘Wandering Stars’ a towering achievement.”

From Jonathan Escoffery’s review

Knopf | $29

PARASOL AGAINST THE AXE Helen Oyeyemi

In Oyeyemi’s latest magical realist adventure, our hero is a woman named Hero, and she is hurtling through the city of Prague, with a shape-shifting book about Prague, during a bachelorette weekend. But Hero doesn’t seem to be directing the novel’s action; the story itself seems to be calling the shots.

“Her stock-in-trade has always been tales at their least domesticated. … In this novel, they have all the autonomy, charisma and messiness of living beings — and demand the same respect.”

From Chelsea Leu’s review

Riverhead | $28

3 SHADES OF BLUE: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool James Kaplan

On one memorable occasion in 1959, three outstanding musicians came together for what may be the greatest jazz record ever, Davis’s “Kind of Blue.” Kaplan, the author of a Frank Sinatra biography, traces the lives of his protagonists in compelling fashion; he may not be a jazz expert but he knows how to tell a good story.

“Kaplan has framed '3 Shades of Blue' as both a chronicle of a golden age and a lament for its decline and fall. One doesn’t have to accept the decline-and-fall part to acknowledge that he has done a lovely job of evoking the golden age.”

From Peter Keepnews’s review

Penguin Press | $35

WITH DARKNESS CAME STARS: A Memoir Audrey Flack

From her early days as an Abstract Expressionist who hung out with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning at the Cedar Bar to her later success as a pioneering photorealist, Flack worked and lived at the center of New York’s art world over her long career; here she chronicles the triumphs, the slights, the sexism and the gossip, all with equal relish.

“Flack is a natural, unfiltered storyteller. … The person who emerges from her pages is someone who never doubts she has somewhere to go.”

From Prudence Peiffer’s review

Penn State University Press | $37.50

AN AMERICAN DREAMER: Life in a Divided Country David Finkel

Agile and bracing, Finkel’s book trails a small network of people struggling in the tumultuous period between the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. At the center is Brent Cummings, a white Iraq war veteran who is trying to cope with a country he no longer recognizes.

“Adroitly assembles these stories into a poignant account of the social and political mood in the United States. … A timely and compelling argument for tolerance and moral character in times of extreme antagonism.”

From John Knight’s review

Random House | $32

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James McBride’s novel sold a million copies, and he isn’t sure how he feels about that, as he considers the critical and commercial success  of “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.”

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20 Must-Read Best Essay Collections of 2019

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

Calling all essay fans! For your reading pleasure, I’ve rounded up the best essay collections of 2019. It was a fabulous year for essays (although I say that about most years, to be honest). We’ve had some stellar anthologies of writing about disability, feminism, and the immigrant experience. We’ve had important collections about race, mental health, the environment, and media. And we’ve had collections of personal essays to entertain us and make us feel less alone. There should be something in this list for just about any reading mood or interest.

These books span the entire year, and in cases where the book isn’t published yet, I’ve given you the publication date so you can preorder it or add it to your library list.

I hope this list of the best essay collections of 2019 helps you find new books you love!

About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times , edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

This book emerged from a  New York Times series of personal essays on living with a disability. Each piece was written by a person in the disabled community, and the volume contains an introduction by Andrew Solomon. The topics cover romance, shame, ambition, childbearing, parenting, aging, and much more. The authors offer a wide range of perspectives on living in a world not built for them.

Black is the Body: Stories from my Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard

Emily Bernard’s essays are about her experiences of race. She writes about life as a black woman in Vermont, her family’s history in Alabama and Nashville, her job as a professor who teaches African American literature, and her adoption of twin girls from Ethiopia. It begins with the story of a stabbing in New Haven and uses that as a springboard to write about what it means to live in a black body.

Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger , edited by Lilly Dancyger (Seal Press, October 8)

Women’s anger has been the source of some important and powerful writing lately (see Rebecca Traister’s  Good and Mad and Soraya Chemaly’s  Rage Becomes Her ). This collection brings together a diverse group of writers to further explore the subject. The book’s 22 writers include Leslie Jamison, Melissa Febos, Evette Dionne, and more.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of essays on mental and chronic illness. Wang combines research with her personal knowledge of illness to explore misconceptions about schizophrenia and disagreements in the medical community about definitions and treatments. She tells moving, honest personal stories about living with mental illness.

The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections by Eliane Brum, Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Graywolf, October 15)

This volume collects work from two of Brum’s books, and includes investigative pieces and profiles about Brazil and its people. She focuses on underrepresented communities such as indigenous midwives from the Amazon and people in the favelas of São Paulo. Her book captures the lives and voices of people not often written about.

Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8)

This volume collects essays written between 2016 and 2018 covering the topic she has always written so beautifully about: the natural world. The essays focus on the concept of erosion, including the erosion of land and of the self. They are her response to the often-overwhelming challenges we face in the political and the natural world.

The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America ,  edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman

This volume brings together an amazing group of writers including Chigozie Obioma, Jenny Zhang, Fatimah Asghar, Alexander Chee, and many more. The essayists are first and second generation immigrants who describe their personal experiences and struggles with finding their place in the U.S. The pieces connect first-person stories with broader cultural and political issues to paint an important picture of the U.S. today.

Good Things Happen to People You Hate: Essays by Rebecca Fishbein (William Morrow, October 15)

In the tradition of Samantha Irby and Sloane Crosley, this collection is a humorous look at life’s unfairness. Fishbein writes about trouble with jobs, bedbugs, fires, and cyber bullying. She covers struggles with alcohol, depression, anxiety, and failed relationships. She is honest and hilarious both, wittily capturing experiences shared by many.

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum

This book contains new and previously published essays by  New Yorker  critic Emily Nussbaum. The pieces include reviews and profiles. They also argue for a new type of criticism that can accommodate the ambition and complexity of contemporary television. She makes a case for opening art criticism up to new forms and voices.

I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi

Bassey Ikpi’s essay collection is about her personal experiences dealing with Bipolar II and anxiety. She writes about struggling with mental health even while her career as a spoken word artist was flourishing. She looks at the ways our mental health is intertwined with every aspect of our lives. It’s an honest look at identity, health, and illness.

Little Weirds by Jenny Slate (Little, Brown and Company, November 5)

These pieces are humorous, whimsical essays about things that are on Jenny Slate’s mind. As she—an actress and stand-up comedian as well as writer—describes it, “I looked into my brain and found a book. Here it is.” With a light touch, she tells us honestly what it’s like to be her and how she sees the world, one little, weird piece of it at a time.

Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays   by Leslie Jamison

Here is Jamison’s follow-up essay collection to the bestselling   Empathy Exams . This one is divided into three sections, “Longing,” “Looking,” and “Dwelling,” each with pieces that combine memoir and journalism. Her subjects include the Sri Lankan civil war, the online world Second Life, the whale 52 Blue, eloping in Las Vegas, giving birth, and many more.

My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education   by Jennine Capó Crucet

Crucet grew up in Miami, the daughter of Cuban refugees. Here she explores her family’s attempts to fit into American culture and her feeling of being a stranger in her own country. She considers her relationship to the so-called “American Dream” and what it means to live in a place that doesn’t always recognize your right to be there.

Notes to Self: Essays by Emilie Pine

Emilie Pine is an Irish writer, and this book is a bestseller in Ireland. These six personal essays touch on addiction, sexual assault, infertility, and more. She captures women’s experiences that often remain hidden. She writes about bodies and emotions from rage to grief to joy with honesty, clarity, and nuance.

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World by Zahra Hankir (Editor) and Christiane Amanpour (Foreword)

This collection gathers together 19 writers discussing their experiences as journalists working in their home countries. These women risk their lives reporting on war and face sexual harassment and difficulties traveling alone, but they also are able to talk to women and get stories their male counterpoints can’t. Their first person accounts offer new perspectives on women’s lives and current events in the Middle East.

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison

Picking this up is a fitting way to pay tribute to the great Toni Morrison, who just passed away last summer. This book is a collection of essays, speeches, and meditations from the past four decades. Topics include the role of the artist, African Americans in American literature, the power of language, and discussions of her own work and that of other writers and artists.

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie is a poet and nature writer. These essays combine travel, memoir, and history to look at a world rapidly changing because of our warming climate. She ranges from thawing tundra in Alaska to the preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland and also examines her own experiences with change as her children grow and her father dies.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

As of this writing,  Thick  was just longlisted for a National Book Award in nonfiction. McMillan Cottom’s essays look at culture and personal experience from a sociological perspective. It’s an indispensable collection for those who want to think about race and society, who like a mix of personal and academic writing, and who want some complex, challenging ideas to chew on.

White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination   by Jess Row

White Flights is an examination of how race gets written about in American fiction, particularly by white writers creating mostly white spaces in their books. Row looks at writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and more to consider the role that whiteness has played in the American literary imagination.

The Witches Are Coming   by Lindy West (Hachette Books, November 5)

The Witches Are Coming  is Lindy West’s follow-up to her wonderful, best-selling book  Shrill .  She’s back with more of her incisive cultural critiques, writing essays on feminism and the misogyny that is (still) embedded in every part of our culture. She brings humor, wit, and much-needed clarity to the gender dynamics at play in media and culture.

There you have it—the best collections of 2019! This was a great year for essays, but so were the two years before. Check out my round-ups of the best essay collections from 2018 and 2017 .

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Artificial general intelligence or agi: a very short history.

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Artificial General Intelligence, AGI concept. AI can learn and solve any human's intellectual tasks.

AGI is the new AI, promoted by tech leaders and AI experts , all promising its imminent arrival, for better or for worse. Anyone frightened by Elon Musk’s warning that “AGI poses a grave threat to humanity, perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today,” should first study the evolution of AGI from science-fiction to real-world fiction.

The term AGI was coined in 2007 when a collection of essays on the subject was published. The book, titled Artificial General intelligence , was co-edited by Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin. In their introduction, they provided a definition:

“AGI is, loosely speaking, AI systems that possess a reasonable degree of self-understanding and autonomous self-control, and have the ability to solve a variety of complex problems in a variety of contexts, and to learn to solve new problems that they didn’t know about at the time of their creation.” The rationale for “christening” AGI for Goertzel and Pennachin was to distinguish it from “run-of-the-mill ‘artificial intelligence’ research,” as AGI is “explicitly focused on engineering general intelligence in the short term.”

In 2007, “run-of-the-mill” research focused on narrow challenges and AI programs of the time could only “generalize within their limited context.” While “work on AGI has gotten a bit of a bad reputation,” according to Goertzel and Pennachin, “AGI appears by all known science to be quite possible. Like nanotechnology, it is ‘merely an engineering problem’, though certainly a very difficult one.”

AGI is considered by Goertzel and Pennachin as only an engineering challenge because “we know that general intelligence is possible, in the sense that humans – particular configurations of atoms – display it. We just need to analyze these atom configurations in detail and replicate them in the computer.”

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Goertzel and Pennachin seem to contradict themselves when they also assert that the Japanese 5 th generation Computer System project “was doomed by its pure engineering approach, by its lack of an underlying theory of mind.” But maybe there’s no contradiction here because they assume that the mind is also a collection of atoms that can be emulated in a computer by the right engineering approach: “We have several contributions in this book that are heavily based on cognitive psychology and its ideas about how the mind works. These contributions pay greater than zero attention to neuroscience, but they are clearly more mind-focused than brain-focused.”

The brain-focused approach presented in the book is “a neural net based approach, trying to model the behavior of nerve cells in the brain and the emergence of intelligence therefrom. Or one can proceed at a higher level, looking at the general ways that information processing is carried out in the brain, and seeking to emulate these in software.”

This was written, of course, when the real fringe of the AI community—ignored in this 2007 book—were the handful of people (e.g., 2018 Turing Award winners Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Joshua Bengio) who in 2007 coined the term “deep learning” to describe their machine learning approach to finding patterns in lots of data using statistical analysis algorithms. These have been called since the 1950s “artificial neural networks,” algorithms that have been presented throughout the years with no empirical evidence as “mimicking the brain.”

In 2007, the people that were the first to discuss various approaches to achieving the newly-termed “AGI” completely ignored the fringe approach to “AI” that in 2012 became the mainstream approach to AI with the successful marriage of GPUs, lots of data, and artificial neural networks. Still, the researchers previously on the fringe of AI and now the kings of the data mountain understood well the branding and marketing power of “AGI” and continued in the exalted tradition of promising the imminent arrival of machines with human-like intelligence (or superintelligence) and the possible extinction of humanity by these possibly malevolent machines.

The key person in the importation of this tradition to the new successful approach to AI was apparently Shane Legg, a co-founder of DeepMind. Legg suggested to Goertzel the term “Artificial General Intelligence” and described to Cade Metz (who quoted Legg in his book Genius Makers ) the general attitude to the subject in the AI community around 2007: “If you talked to anybody about general AI, you would be considered at best eccentric, at worst some kind of delusional, nonscientific character.”

Aspiring to build superintelligence while worrying about what it could do to humanity, Legg joined his colleague Demis Hassabis (they were exploring the connections between the brain and machine learning at UCL) to establish DeepMind. Hassabis told Legg that “they could raise far kore money from venture capitalists than they ever could writing grant proposals as professors,” Metz reports. With AGI as the stated aim of DeepMind, mentioned in the first line of their business plan, “they told anyone who would listen, including potential investors, that this research could be dangerous.”

To get to Peter Thiel, their first investor, Hassabis gave a presentation at the 2010 Singularity Conference, arguing that the best way to build artificial intelligence was to mimic the way the brain worked: “We should be focusing on the algorithmic level of the brain, extracting the kind of representations and algorithms the brain uses to solve the kind of problems we want to solve with AGI.”

There you have it. Using the term “AGI”—with its exciting connotations of both saving and destroying humanity—to get the attention and deep pockets of investors, claiming to replicate the human brain in the computer while pursuing a statistical analysis method that has nothing to do empirically speaking with how the human brain works .

Whether insisting that their approach to AI resembles the biological processes of the human brain (“connectionism”) or that they can replicate the process of human thinking in the computer (“symbolic AI”), the two key approaches to AI since the term was coined in 1955 have banked on the widely accepted notion that “ we are as gods .” This belief in modern man’s ability to conquer all frontiers, even replicate man in the machine, has been based on the centuries-old idea that humans are a “particular configurations of atoms.”

Next in my AGI Washing Series, I will offer a short pre-history of AGI.

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Grandia HD Collection

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The highly-anticipated Grandia HD Collection for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S are here! Get your hands on two games that changed the landscape of RPGs forever, in beautiful HD graphics. GRANDIA: Dive into the captivating journey of Justin and his allies as they race against the sinister Garlyle Forces. Unravel the mysteries of a forgotten civilization and immerse yourself in an RPG hailed as a timeless classic, inspiring generations of games to come. GRANDIA II: Step into the shoes of Ryudo, a jaded Geohound with a heart, as he embarks on a magical quest alongside a group of unlikely allies. Their journey is riddled with twists and turns as they seek a divine weapon to save the world. Delve deep into this tale where the line between good and evil blurs, and everything is open to question…

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