The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers, is compiled by a team of high school students who spend the year reading everything they can get their hands on. The students debate the merits of the year’s crop of both fiction and nonfiction and, in the end, they come out with an eccentric anthology that you don’t have to read but should. What’s more, the committee has a blog: it’s a tantalizing window into what the students are reading, thinking, saying, and arguing about.
Best American Nonrequired Blog
Jesse Nathan
Jesse Nathan is an editor at McSweeney’s and the managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. His poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, the American Poetry Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Nation. He was born in Berkeley, grew up in Kansas, and lives now in San Francisco.