The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016

“If you need to fall in love with reading again—or just want a reminder that high school students deserve a lot more than their reading lists give them—then this is the book for you.”?—Bust

Guest editor Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers, works with a group of high school students out of 826 San Francisco to select The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. The BANR Committee gathers weekly in the basement of a small publishing house in San Francisco to read literary magazines, chapbooks, graphic novels, blogs, transcripts, and anything else that strikes their fancy. They are assisted by a group of 826 students that meet in the basement of a robot shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

RACHEL KUSHNER's most recent novel, The Flamethrowers, was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, the 2014 Folio Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize, longlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and a New York Times Top Five Novel of 2013. Kushner is the only writer ever to be nominated for a National Book Award in Fiction for both a first and second novel. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, and the Paris Review, among other places.

826 NATIONAL is a family of seven nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping underserved students, ages six through eighteen, with their creative and expository writing skills.