The Best American Essays 2025

By: Jia Tolentino, Kim Dana Kupperman

Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass, Jensen Olaya, Rasha Zamamiri, Brittany Bradford, Sean Rohani, Sean Patrick Hopkins

“The essay has taught me how to live,” writes Jia Tolentino, this year’s Best American Essays guest editor. In a time of escalating authoritarianism and disinformation, we turn to artists and writers to make sense of the world around us. The twenty-one authors featured in this collection do not proselytize, nor do they claim to have all the answers. Instead, they teach with vulnerability, raw truths, and open questions. This volume offers testimonies and personal narratives about war and fear; oblivion and memory; disease, grief, and boredom; nonhuman animals and plants; poverty and hyperabundance; consciousness and solipsism; the loss of literature and the work of art; pretense and respect.

THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2025 INCLUDES: ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS • SARAH AZIZA • JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN • CAROLYN FORCHÉ • MOSAB ABU TOHA • CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN • WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ • CHRISTINA SHARPE • AND OTHERS

Get some decent audio talent!

Collections are always hit and miss. You love some, hate some, some are in between but man oh man, you don't expect awful audio talent for something called "The Best American Essays." Ok, they aren't all horrible, but none are good and Jean Ann Douglass...she goes on my NEVER list. Her tone is abysmal. She reads everything in a clipped angry tone. Such a disconnect. It was hard to concentrate on the essays she read because you'd hear her say words like, "sad" or "despair," and she sounds mad. Or clearly the passage is not about being angry but she reads everything as pissed off. Other times, I'd be thinking that maybe the author is mad but more likely sad or something else. But no, just jarring Jean ruining every essay. It's like if the words are "I love you! You and the kids are the best thing that ever happened to me. I am so grateful you're in my life." but they're screamed in your face in an angry tone of voice. Hard to know exactly what to do with that.