Prof. Vurro’s Work Included in Best American Essays Collection

"Guardians," an essay by John Vurro '25M, MFA, adjunct professor in the Department of English, was included as a "notable essay" in The Best American Essays of 2025 (HarperCollins, 2025). The work, originally published in The Sun in 2024, was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

"The Monmouth University English department is not only enormously proud of all of John's varied accomplishments, but we are also incredibly fortunate to count him as a colleague and rely on him to serve as a great instructor and role model for the undergraduate student writers in his creative writing and first-year writing courses," said John P. Hanly, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Department of English.

The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Jia Tolentino, critically acclaimed essayist, editor, and New Yorker staff writer, selects 20 essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year. The 2025 collection-which features testimonies and personal narratives about war and fear; oblivion and memory; disease, grief, and boredom; poverty and hyperabundance; the loss of literature and the work of art, and more-is available for purchase online.

The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series is a similarly esteemed collection published every year since 1976. The annual collections represent hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry, and essays.

Hanly added, "John's successes are a credit mainly to his unique talent and his dedication to his craft, but they also reflect well on the way our M.A.-to-MFA program and its faculty prepare students and provide them with the sort of strong and supportive community they need to develop their voices and lay the groundwork for a successful career as a writer."

"Guardians" is available to read online.