Announcing the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards Longlists.

Bonnie Friedman is the author of the best-selling Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer's Life, which has been widely anthologized. Her most recent book is Surrendering Oz, a Life in Essays.Her essays have been included in The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Buddhist Writing, The Best of O., Oprah Magazine, and The Best Writing on Writing.I was lucky to read an early copy of Sarah Menkedick's Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America.In turn a lyrical memoir, researched reportage and feminist query into the anxiety of contemporary motherhood, Menkedicks book explores the different ways fear is eroding maternal health in America.It was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and won the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. (23) Parts of Crews's 1975 collection Out of My System, (24) the 1986 collection Skeptical Engagements, (25) and the 2006 Follies of the Wise (26) were also dedicated to literary criticism.