An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work selected by high school students with the help of New York Times best-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 in San Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others. Hill country / Patricia Sammon—Follow the drinking gourd / Charles Johnson—Curse for the American dream / Jane Wong—Barbarians at the gate / Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling—I worked with Avital Ronell. I believe her accuser/ Andrea Long Chu—Holton Arms class of 1984. to the United States Congress—Diagnosis in reverse / Kate Gaskin—On true war stories/ Viet Thanh Nguyen—The frog king / Garth Greenwell—Child A / Emily Rinkema—As the sparks fly upward / Renee Branum—Arabic lesson / Latifa Ayad—Barbara from Florida/ Maddy Raskulinecz—It's natural (selected comics)/ Nathaniel Russell—Our Belgian wife / Uche Okonkwo—Self-care / Robin Coste Lewis—The brothers Aguayo/ Devin Gordon—Naked and vulnerable, the rest is circumstance / Sylvia Chan—Spring / Mikko Harvey—The babyland diaries / Angela Garbes—Two poems / Britteney Black Rose Kapri—The Gettysburg Address (sound translations 1 and 2 / Keith Donnell Jr. — Almost Human / Deborah Taffa—Macho / Margaret Ross—The lake and the onion / David Drury