Issue:
Spring 2017
On the Bookshelf
“In Praise of Contempt” Essay by Katherine Standefer ’07 Standefer’s essay is featured in “The Best American Essays 2016,” edited by Jonathan Franzen and Robert Atwan. The essay originally appeared in The Iowa Review as the winner of the 2015 Iowa Review Award for Nonfiction, with a judge in that contest noting the essay takes a “no-nonsense approach to sexual morality.” In the anthology’s introduction, guest editor Franzen writes that an essay is “something hazarded, not definitive, not authoritative; something ventured on the basis of the author’s personal experience and subjectivity.” However, his main criterion for selecting “The Best American Essays 2016” was, in a word, risk. Published by Mariner…Read more