Our Favorite Contemporary Essayists
The American essay is alive and well — reinvented in voices that span generations, perspectives, and forms. Some essayists approach the form like poets, some like reporters, others like prophets. But the best of them write with clarity and conviction, pulling readers into both their mind and the moment we live in.
This list brings together some of our favorite contemporary essayists — a mix of icons and emerging voices, living and recently passed. Their essays reflect on identity, place, memory, and meaning — and many of them have helped redefine what the essay can be.
Annie Dillard
Dillard is a master of the contemplative essay. Her 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, reads like a meditation disguised as observation. Whether she's reflecting on weasels or muskrats, Dillard teaches us to look — and look again.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
In a noisy world, Dillard’s prose feels like stillness. Her essays call us to attend, to notice, to live with purpose.
Richard Rodriguez
Rodriguez’s essays are both personal and political. In Hunger of Memory and later works like Brown, he explores the tension between assimilation and identity, between silence and voice. His sentences are elegant, reflective, and often surprising.
“The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with the private self.”
Few writers explore the soul of America — and the cost of belonging — with such intelligence and honesty.
Leslie Jamison
In The Empathy Exams, Jamison examines pain, care, and vulnerability — from personal relationships to Morgellons disease. Her essays blend memoir, cultural criticism, and investigative reporting, all laced with literary precision.
“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us — it's also a choice we make.”
Jamison represents a new wave of essayists unafraid to show the seams — to admit uncertainty, contradiction, and longing.
Zadie Smith
Already celebrated as a novelist, Zadie Smith has also emerged as a major essayist. In collections like Feel Free and Intimations, she writes about pop culture, philosophy, race, Brexit, and Beyoncé — with equal insight.
“The essay is a form with no rules, and that is what draws me to it.”
Smith’s essays are charming, sharp, and curious. She gives us permission to follow a thought wherever it leads.
Hanif Abdurraqib
A poet, music critic, and essayist, Abdurraqib’s work centers Black joy, grief, and memory. In books like A Little Devil in America, he weaves pop culture and autobiography with grace and urgency.
“I do not think love is only joy. I think love is also grief. I think it is also loss.”
His essays feel like invitations — not just to read, but to remember, to feel, to be human.
Eula Biss
Biss blends the lyrical with the researched. In Notes from No Man’s Land and On Immunity, she writes about whiteness, motherhood, and public trust — drawing on history, myth, and literature to make the personal political.
“We have an obligation to try to see, as clearly as possible, the world in which we live.”
Her essays are quiet and exacting — the kind that linger after you close the book.
Hilton Als
As a staff writer for The New Yorker, Als brings a unique blend of criticism, memoir, and cultural commentary. His work often centers race, queerness, and the performing self — with an eye for both tenderness and critique.
“Sometimes, in the dark, you tell the truth.”
Als writes like no one else — unafraid to be vulnerable, analytical, and artful all at once.
Joan Didion
Though no longer with us, Didion’s influence on contemporary essay writing is unmatched. Her precision, her cool detachment, her ability to thread personal fragility with political breakdown — she changed the American essay forever.
If you haven’t yet, read our full post on her work: How Joan Didion’s The White Album Changed Essay Writing.
More to Read
This list is personal, not exhaustive. We also admire the work of Roxane Gay, Teju Cole, Brian Doyle, Kiese Laymon, Rebecca Solnit, and many more. The beauty of the essay is its openness — there’s always room for another voice, another mind at work.
