The Best American Magazine Writing 2023

The Best American Magazine Writing 2023 offers a selection of outstanding journalism on timely topics, including inequalities and injustices pressuring families, especially mothers. Rozina Ali tells the story of a U.S. marine who unlawfully adopted an Afghan girl and her family’s efforts to bring her home ( New York Times Magazine ). A Mother Jones exposé confronts the imprisonment of women for failing to protect their children from their abusive partners. “The Landlord and the Tenant” juxtaposes the lives of a poor single mother convicted for her children’s deaths in a fire and the man who owned the fatal property ( ProPublica with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ). Caitlin Dickerson investigates the history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy ( The Atlantic ). Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker commentary considers abortion in a post- Roe world.

The anthology features pieces on a wide range of subjects, such as Nate Jones on the “Nepo Baby” and Allison P. Davis’s essay about a decade on Tinder ( New York ). Natalie So recounts how her mother’s small computer chip company became the target of a Silicon Valley crime ring ( The Believer ). Clint Smith asks what Holocaust memorials in Germany can teach the United States about our reckoning with slavery ( The Atlantic ). Esquire ’s Chris Heath examines the FBI’s involvement in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Courtney Desiree Morris takes a queer psychedelic ramble through New Orleans ( Stranger’s Guide ). Namwali Serpell reflects on representations of sex workers ( New York Review of Books ). An ESPN Digital investigation uncovers Penn State’s other serial sexual predator before Jerry Sandusky. Profiles of the acclaimed actress Viola Davis ( New York Times Magazine ) and the self-taught artist Matthew Wong ( New Yorker ), as well as Michelle de Kretser’s short story “Winter Term” ( Paris Review ), round out the volume.