We just got some excellent news today: MFA student Richard Prins has been selected for The Best American Essays 2024. Richard, fresh off the heels of winning an NEA Fellowship, had his essay “Because: An Etiology” selected by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and acclaimed New York Times critic Wesley Morris.

The Best American series selects twenty essays out of thousands of nominations from literary journals which represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. Each year an established writer is brought in to act as judge for this prestigious anthology, but is presided over by series editor Kim Dana Kupperman at HarperCollins.

The anthology officially publishes towards the end of October, so you can preorder your copy now. Or, you can read Richard’s inventive essay “Because: An Etiology” in the Potomac Review.

Congratulations, Richard!