An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, & graphic work selected by high school students with the help ofNew York Timesbest-selling author Edan Lepucki.Over the past year, a group of high school students have held weekly discussions in the basement conference room of a publishing house inSan Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, & astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, & essays. With the help of guest editorEdan Lepucki, they selected the contents of thisanthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. TheBest American Nonrequired Reading 2019features comics about war & butts & stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, & more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself.TheBest American Nonrequired Reading 2019includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, & others.°°°EDAN LEPUCKIis theNew York Timesbestselling author of the novelsTime's Mouth,California, &Woman No. 17, as well as the editor ofMothers Before: Stories & Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Hernonfictionhas been published in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, & The Cut, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. Find out more atedanlepucki.com.