Angelique Stevens

ANGELIQUE STEVENS teaches creative writing, literature of genocide, and race literatures. Her nonfiction can be found in Literary Hub, New England Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington College and an MA from SUNY Brockport in literature. Her honors include an alumni fellowship from Bennington College’s MFA program; fellowships from the Bread Loaf, Tin House, Sewanee, and Kenyon Review writers workshops; a fellowship to the inaugural cohort of the Periplus Collective; and a fellowship to the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project. She is a founding member of the Straw Mat Writers Group and a member of the board of directors of Water for South Sudan. She finds inspiration in wandering—being in places that push the boundaries of comfort, experience, knowledge, and hunger.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (pp. 289). HarperCollins.

Naomi Jackson

NAOMI JACKSON is the author of a novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill. Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an MA in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. She is a graduate of Williams College. Jackson’s writings have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Writer. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Camargo Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University–Newark. She lives in New York City with her family.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (pp. 287-288). HarperCollins.

Jung Hae Chae

JUNG HAE CHAE is a Korean American writer. Her work has appeared in Agni, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Ploughshares, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in the 2019 Pushcart Prize Collection. Most recently, she won the 2021 Crazyhorse Prize in Nonfiction and the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest in Nonfiction from Ploughshares. Her work has been supported by scholarships and fellowships from New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Idyllwild Arts Foundation, Monson Arts, Sewanee Writers Conference, Squaw Valley Writers Conference, and others. Currently, she is at work on a memoir that explores the matrilineal han in the Korean diaspora.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 286). HarperCollins.

Anthony Veasna So

Anthony Veasna So on Amazon

ANTHONY VEASNA SO (1992–2020) was a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. A native of Stockton, California, he taught at Colgate University, Syracuse University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 289). HarperCollins.

Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos on Amazon

MELISSA FEBOS is the bestselling author of four books, most recently, Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, Lambda Literary, the Barbara Deming Foundation, the Black Mountain Institute, and others. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 287). HarperCollins.

Vauhini Vara

Vauhini Vara on Amazon

VAUHINI VARA is the author of The Immortal King Rao, a novel, and the forthcoming story collection This Is Salvaged. She has written and edited for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and elsewhere and, for her nonfiction, has won honors from the International Center for Journalists, the McGraw Center for Business Journalism, the Asian American Journalists Association, and the South Asian Journalists Association. Her fiction has been honored by the O. Henry Prize, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is a mentor at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project and the secretary at Periplus, a mentorship collective serving writers of color.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (pp. 289-290). HarperCollins.

Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney on Amazon

DEBRA GWARTNEY is the author of two memoirs, Live Through This, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and I Am a Stranger Here Myself, winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize. She is coeditor with her husband, Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. Her essay “Suffer Me to Pass,” from VQR, was selected for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Debra lives in western Oregon.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 287). HarperCollins.

Elissa Washuta

Elissa Washuta on Amazon

ELISSA WASHUTA is a member of the Cowlitz Indian tribe and the author of White Magic, Starvation Mode, and My Body Is a Book of Rules. With Theresa Warburton, she coedited the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Elissa is an associate professor at Ohio State University, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 290). HarperCollins.

Brian Blanchfield

Brian Blanchfield on Amazon

BRIAN BLANCHFIELD is the author of three books of poetry and prose, most recently Proxies: Essays Near Knowing. Recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award and a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, he lives now in Missoula, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Montana. He is also a member of the core faculty at Bennington Writing Seminars.

- The Best American Essays 2022 (p. 286). HarperCollins.