The Best American Magazine Writing 2016

This year's *Best American Magazine Writing* features outstanding writing on contentious issues including incarceration, policing, sexual assault, labor, technology, and environmental catastrophe. Selections include Paul Ford's ambitious "What Is Code?" (*Bloomberg Businessweek*), an innovative explanation of how programming works, and "The Really Big One," by Kathryn Schulz (*The New Yorker*), which exposes just how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is for a major earthquake. Joining them are Meaghan Winter's expose of crisis pregnancy centers (*Cosmopolitan*) and a chilling story of police prejudice that allowed a serial rapist to run free (the Marshall Project in partnership with *ProPublica*). Also included is Shane Smith's interview with Barack Obama about mass incarceration (*Vice*).

Other selections demonstrate a range of long-form styles and topics across print and digital publications. The imprisoned hacker and activist Barrett Brown pens hilarious dispatches from behind bars, including a scathing review of Jonathan Franzen's fiction (*The Intercept*). "The New American Slavery" (*Buzzfeed*) documents the pervasive exploitation of guest workers, and Luke Mogelson explores the purgatorial fate of an undocumented man sent back to Honduras (*New York Times Magazine*). Joshua Hammer harrowingly portrays Sierra Leone's worst Ebola ward as even the staff succumb to the disease (*Matter*). And in "The Friend," Matthew Teague's wife is afflicted with cancer, his friend moves in, and the result is a devastating narrative of relationships and death (*Esquire*). The collection concludes with Jenny Zhang's "How It Feels," an unconventional meditation on the intersection of teenage cruelty and art (*Poetry*).