This year's Best American Magazine Writing features outstanding writing on contentious issues including incarceration, policing, sexual assault, labor, technology, and environmental catastrophe. Selections include Paul Ford's ambitious "What Is Code?" (Bloomberg Businessweek), an innovative explanation of how programming works, and "The Really Big One," by Kathryn Schulz (The New Yorker), which exposes just how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is for a major earthquake. Joining them are Meaghan Winter's expose of crisis pregnancy centers (Cosmopolitan) and a...

With the work of journalists under fire around the world, this year's anthology of National Magazine Awards finalists and winners is a timely reminder of the power of journalism. These pieces from writers driven to explore America's fault lines include Shane Bauer's harrowing "My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard" (Mother Jones), a visceral portrait of the abuses of the carceral system, and Sarah Stillman's account of the havoc wreaked on young people's lives when they are put on sex-offender registries (The New Yorker). In two different considerations of parenting,...

This year's National Magazine Awards finalists and winners include outstanding writing that addresses urgent topics such as justice, gender, power, and violence, both at home and abroad.