Monday, June 1, 2026
Thursday, May 28, 2026
About Mariner Books
Mariner Books traces its beginnings to 1832 when William Ticknor cofounded the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, from which he would run the legendary firm Ticknor and Fields, publisher of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Following Ticknor’s death, Henry Oscar Houghton acquired Ticknor and Fields and, in 1880, formed Houghton Mifflin, which later merged with venerable Harcourt Publishing to form Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. HarperCollins purchased HMH’s trade publishing business in 2021 and reestablished their storied lists and editorial team under the name Mariner Books.
Uniting the legacies of Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt Brace, and Ticknor and Fields, Mariner Books continues one of the great traditions in American bookselling. Our imprints have introduced an incomparable roster of enduring classics, including Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Ann Petry’s The Narrows, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, and many others. Today Mariner Books remains proudly committed to the craft of fine publishing established nearly two centuries ago at the Old Corner Bookstore.
Xujun Eberlein
Xujun Eberlein is an immigrant writer who has lived in two different worlds. Recipient of the artist fellowship in fiction/creative nonfiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a fiction scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a Goldfarb Nonfiction Fellowship from VCCA, Xujun is the author of the story collection Apologies Forthcoming, and an essayist whose writing has been recognized with special mentions in the Pushcart Prize anthologies and as notable in Best American Essays. Her work can be found in AGNI, American Literary Review, Brevity, The Iowa Review, LARB, New England Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Transportation Science from MIT and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Emerson College. Currently, she is at work on a memoir and teaches creative writing at GrubStreet in Boston.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Chris Dennis
Chris Dennis is the author of the story collection Here Is What You Do. A regular contributor at Granta, his other stories and essays have appeared in Paris Review, Playgirl, McSweeney’s, Astra, Lit Hub, Bull, and Guernica. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship and a New York Times Sidney Award for long-form journalism. He lives in southern Illinois and works in public health as a recovery and overdose prevention coordinator.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Eric Borsuk
Eric Borsuk is the author of American Animals (Turner, 2020), the memoir featured in the acclaimed motion picture of the same name. He has written for such award-winning publications as The Marshall Project, Vice, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Borsuk’s essay, “Bidders of the Din,” which chronicles his experiences in the US federal prison system, received the 2022 Sidney Award from David Brooks of The New York Times and was featured in Longreads’ Best of 2022. He works with organizations around the US to spotlight stories of individuals impacted by the criminal justice system and incarceration. Borsuk lives in Brooklyn, where he serves on the board of directors of Die Jim Crow Records (DJC Records), the nation’s first nonprofit record label for prison-impacted musicians.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Sylvie Baumgartel
Sylvie Baumgartel is the author of Song of Songs (FSG, 2019) and Pink (FSG, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Financial Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Subtropics, Raritan, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the PEN Poetry Series, The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Jillian Barnet
Jillian Barnet’s poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, New Letters, Nimrod, and Image, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts, is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the author of the poetry chapbook Falling Bodies. Links to some of her work can be found at jillianbarnetwrites.com. She taught writing and literature at Pennsylvania State University and Chatham University, and now lives on a tiny farm in the Finger Lakes where she is at work on a memoir.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Ciara Alfaro
Ciara Alfaro is a Chicanx writer, romantic, and descendant of magicians from Texas. Her work has appeared in Cutthroat’s Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, Water~Stone Review, swamp pink, and elsewhere. Most recently, she won Iron Horse Literary Review’s 2022 PhotoFinish Contest. Her work has been supported by awards and fellowships from Colgate University, the Anderson Center, Hedgebrook, and others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Currently, she is at work on a memoir about queer mestiza girlhood, monsterhood, and magic.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.