About The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee

Our selection committee consists of a handful of high school students. One
contingent is in the Bay Area and a second is in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
These students help Dave Eggers edit The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Daniel Gumbiner is the book's managing editor; Henry W. Leung and Jia Tolentino
are the assistant managing editors facilitating the committee in Michigan.

This collection, published by Houghton-Mifflin, compiles the country's best
fiction, journalism, essays, comics, and humor every year, and introduces
a large readership to dozens of new writers and publications.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading committee comprising
students from dozens of different high schools meets nearly every week of the
year to read, debate, and compile this offbeat but vital anthology.

Want to say something to us? Contact the BANR committee at
nonrequired@gmail.com. We'll read everything you send us.



About the BANR Committee Members

Meet the committee members who are currently finding the best from 2008.

In San Francisco...

Adrianne is a senior in high school. Next year in college she will be studying finance and business while exploring her artistic aspirations of becoming a poet and/or lyricist. She loves chocolate. She also loves experiencing different cultures. She has traveled to Japan, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, and Mexico and hopes to continue her travels while embracing the many walks of life.



Charley is a junior at Berkeley High School, where she enjoys writing faux-Republican opinion articles for the school newspaper and studying languages, dead or alive. She has acted in many plays at the American Conservatory Theater, where she specializes in playing little sisters. She also enjoys swings, hypothetical scenarios, and dessert. Her apple recommendations are Granny Smiths or Pink Ladies.




Yael is a senior in the Creative Writing department at School of the Arts. She enjoys sketch comedy and fiction, and hopes to one day write funny things.








Bora is a senior at Lick-Wilmerding (yes, that's its real name) High School. She enjoys eating candy and being in the sun. She also enjoys playing badminton, the viola, and taking care of her fern collection.



Marley is a junior at San Francisco's School for the Arts. She is currently left-handed, a vegetarian, enjoys squeaking, playing the bass guitar, and eating mangoes. She took on writing because her friends told her there was no future in speaking.


Tanea does not enjoy writing her own bios, but she enjoys watching movies with accurate translation subtitles and listening to music she can dig. She goes to church every Sunday (by choice) and loves it. She loves all people and hates when people refer to themselves in third person, so she will stop now.



Eli is an eighteen-year-old writer at San Francisco School of the Arts. He's been successfully unemployed for the last eighteen years and is very excited to see what unemployment opportunities await him after college.






Will is a junior at Crystal Springs High School. In his free time he enjoys reading, eating Ramen, and playing Ultimate Frisbee. He is also very pale, or so his friends claim.






Roxie is a senior at Albany High. Apart from reading and talking about stories, she enjoys writing stories, reading plays, and talking. She is a proud editor of Crosshatch Collective (a quarterly zine), and she loves vegan food. A lot.




Fiona is a senior in the Creative Writing department at the San Francisco School of the Arts. She has wanted a dog forever and feels that this year is the year.







Sophia is currently a senior at Redwood High School outside San Francisco. She writes for her school paper and aspires to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. She enjoys getting the New York Times on Sunday mornings and following the 2008 presidential election on the blogosphere. She likes everything except math.






Virginia is a junior at Unity High School in East Oakland.




Chloe is a kitty at International High School. She is currently making use of her 'sophomore slump' time by writing short stories about lions and keeps fit by struggling with a variety of instruments daily.



Molly is a junior at Castileja School. Likes include talking, eating, writing, driving, and painting things that are not paper (and also things that are paper). Dislikes include cough medicine and writing bibliographies. Her favorite character in The Lion King is Scar. A person in China recently told her that she was a "cool type" and that she looked like Tibby from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Molly has yet to respond to this comment.



And in Michigan...

Elizabeth is a homeschooled senior. A published writer, Elizabeth thinks BANR is the best thing since sliced bread, and quite possibly since unsliced bread. She’s passionate about her volunteer work at the Toledo Zoo, her family’s farm, writing, birds of prey (both the animals and the Klingon starships), and obscure British sci-fi TV shows.

Carlina is a sophomore at Pioneer High School. She has a passion for bright colors, and she craves creativity like mad. She is a staff writer for her school paper, and has high hopes for pursing a career in journalism in the future. But for now, she is content with just carrying the title of Herself.

Michelle is a sophomore at Community High School. She writes decently and draws horribly, and is cursed with a strange ability to mangle the language. This is why she speaks Spanish instead. She is, however, not Spanish, but English. This, and her casting as Lysander in A Midsummer's Night's Dream, should give you a basic idea about her.

Sam is a senior at Ypsilanti High School and represents Y-Town. He likes being funny and someday wants to get paid for it. He also needs to learn how to not waste days on the Internet.

Shelley is a sophomore at Pioneer High. She loves pasta, mango-melon flavored Starbursts, reading prose, and policy debate. She hopes to go to college and get a job that involves sunshine.

Eva is an 18-year-old writer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She spends her time reading cool books at a smoky diner. When she grows up (for real), she wants to get paid cash money to write sweet stories that make people cry happy tears.

Adam is a 16-year-old aspiring director from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He loves all movies, particularly spaghetti westerns. He spends his life planning to spend his life directing films.

Rachel is in a pickle. While living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she would much rather read and frolic in sunbeams, but fills this void by doing volunteer work and being on the BANR committee. She also enjoys long naps.

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