The Best American Magazine Writing 2023 offers a selection of outstanding journalism on timely topics, including inequalities and injustices pressuring families, especially mothers. Rozina Ali tells the story of a U.S. marine who unlawfully adopted an Afghan girl and her family's efforts to bring her home (New York Times Magazine). A Mother Jones exposé confronts the imprisonment of women for failing to protect their children from their abusive partners. "The Landlord and the Tenant" juxtaposes the lives of a poor single mother convicted for her children's deaths in a fire and the man who owned the fatal property (ProPublica with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Caitlin Dickerson investigates the history of the U.S. government's family-separation policy (The Atlantic). Jia Tolentino's New Yorker commentary considers abortion in a post-Roe world.

The anthology features pieces on a wide range of subjects, such as Nate Jones on the "Nepo Baby" and Allison P. Davis's essay about a decade on Tinder (New York). Natalie So recounts how her mother's small computer chip company became the target of a Silicon Valley crime ring (The Believer). Clint Smith asks what Holocaust memorials in Germany can teach the United States about our reckoning with slavery (The Atlantic). Esquire's Chris Heath examines the FBI's involvement in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Courtney Desiree Morris takes a queer psychedelic ramble through New Orleans (Stranger's Guide). Namwali Serpell reflects on representations of sex workers (New York Review of Books). An ESPN Digital investigation uncovers Penn State's other serial sexual predator before Jerry Sandusky. Profiles of the acclaimed actress Viola Davis (New York Times Magazine) and the self-taught artist Matthew Wong (New Yorker), as well as Michelle de Kretser's short story "Winter Term" (Paris Review), round out the volume.