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What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines?

Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, they responded to his call to celebrate this great city by providing almost all brand-new works, and forgoing royalties in order to support the survivors and their families.

From Mike Barnicle to Pico Iyer, Susan Orlean to George Plimpton, Leigh Montville to Lesley Visser, Pagan Kennedy to James Atlas, here is a collection of the best essays by our best writers on one of America's greatest cities.

Kevin Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has written for the Boston Globe since 1985, and he was the first to raise questions about Whitey Bulger's relationship with the FBI. A frequent commentator on NPR and the BBC, Cullen has won major journalism prizes, including the Goldsmith Prize, the George Polk Award, and the Selden Ring Award.

Jabari Asim is deputy editor of the Washington Post Book World. He also writes a weekly syndicated column on popular culture. His writing has appeared in Essence, Salon.com, the Los Angeles Times, and the Village Voice.

Leslie Epstein, whose father and uncle, Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein, wrote Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca, and many other classics of the golden era of films, is the author of eight works of fiction, including Pandaemonium and Pinto and Sons. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has for many years directed the Creative Writing Program at Boston University.

Scott Stossel is the editor of the Atlantic and the author of Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver. His articles and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives with his family in Washington, DC.

Robert Pinsky was born and raised in Long Branch, New Jersey. He went to college at Rutgers and then to graduate studies at Stanford, where he held a Stegner Fellowship. Among his collections of poetry are Gulf Music, Jersey Rain, The Want Bone, and The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996. His bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. His prose books include The Life of David, The Situation of Poetry, and The Sounds of Poetry. Among his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, the Italian Premio Capri, the PEN-Volcker Award, and the Korean Manhae Prize. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. Robert Pinsky founded The Favorite Poem Project, including the videos that can be seen at www.favoritepoem.org, while serving an unprecedented three terms as United States Poet Laureate.

Neil Swidey is the author of The Assist, a Boston Globe bestseller that was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. A staff writer for the Boston Globe Magazine, he has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and has twice won the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He teaches at Tufts University and lives outside Boston with his wife and three daughters.

John Updike (1932-2009) was the author of more than sixty books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have been honored with two Pulitzer Prize Awards, the National Book Award, and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hugging the Shore, a collection of essays and reviews, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Pico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist long based in both California and Japan. He is the author of numerous books about crossing cultures, among them Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, and The Global Soul. An essayist for Time since 1986, he also publishes regularly in Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and many other publications across the globe.

Jim Meskimen is a stage, film, and television actor who has appeared in many well-known movies and television shows. He acted in Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard, both of which were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. His television appearances include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, and Parks and Recreation. He is also a painter, award-winning audiobook narrator, and audiobook director for Galaxy Audio.

Meredith Mitchell is an actress who has performed in such films as Mona Lisa Smile and The Reunion, on stage with Shakespeare & Company and the New Repertory Theatre, and on television on Good Morning America. She received her BA in psychology from Emory University and her MFA in acting from Brandeis University.

David Michaelis is the author of two bestselling biographies, including N. C. Wyeth, which won the Ambassador Book Award for Biography and Autobiography, given by the English-Speaking Union of the United States. He lives in New York City.

Hugh Delehanty is a former editor for Sports Illustrated and People. He is also the co-author, along with Phil Jackson, of the bestselling memoir Sacred Hoops.

George Plimpton (1927-2003) was the bestselling author and editor of nearly thirty books, as well as the cofounder, publisher, and editor of the Paris Review. He wrote regularly for such magazines as Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and he appeared numerous times in films and on television.

Leigh Montville, a former columnist at the Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, is the author of the bestselling Ted Williams, At the Altar of Speed, and Why Not Us?. He lives in Boston.

Tova Mirvis is the author of The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various anthologies and newspapers, including the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Poets and Writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center and is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her three children.

Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.

Andrew Blauner is the founder of Blauner Books Literary Agency. He is the editor of Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference; Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry; and Central Park: An Anthology. He is also coeditor of Anatomy of Baseball. A graduate of Brown University and Columbia Business School, he is a member of PEN and the National Book Critic Circle.

Andre Aciman is the author of the novels Call Me by Your Name and Eight White Nights, the memoir Out of Egypt, and two books of essays. He is also the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he directs the Writers' Institute.

George Howe Colt is the bestselling author of November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide and The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, which was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. He lives with his family in Massachusetts.

Nell Scovell is a television writer, producer, and director. She collaborated with Sheryl Sandberg on the #1 New York Times bestseller Lean In and is the creator of the television series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Other credits include The Simpsons, Coach, Monk, Murphy Brown, Charmed, and NCIS. She has directed two movies for cable and an episode of Awkward for MTV. She has contributed to SPY magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New York Times.

She and her husband, Colin Summers, have two college-age sons. Despite Blue Oyster Cult's well-reasoned arguments, she still fears the reaper.

Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1992. She is the author of several books, including Rin Tin Tin, a New York Times bestseller, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation.

Dennis Lehane is the author of numerous novels, including several New York Times bestsellers, as well as a collection of short stories and a play. Mystic River was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and it won the Anthony Award, the Barry Award for Best Novel, and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

James Atlas has been an editor for the New York Times Book Review and the New York Times Magazine and a staff writer for the New Yorker and the Atlantic. He is the founder of Atlas Books and the general editor of the Eminent Lives series. His other books include Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet, Bellow: A Biography, and a novel, The Great Pretender, among others.

Jessica Shattuck is a New York Times bestselling novelist. Her book The Hazards of Good Breeding was a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Winship Award. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Glamour, Mother Jones, Wired, and The Believer, among other publications. A graduate of Harvard University, she received her MFA from Columbia University.

Peter Berkrot, a forty-year veteran of stage and screen, has voiced over three hundred audiobook titles, winning Earphones Awards, a 2012 Audie Award nomination, and a 2016 Audie Award.

Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. Named an AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 175 audiobooks.

Johnny Heller, winner of dozens of AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a two-time winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and was named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013.

Kevin Kenerly, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, earned a BA degree at Olivet College. A longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has acted in fifteen seasons, playing dozens of roles.

Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award-winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

Bronson Pinchot, an Audie Award-winning narrator and Audible's Narrator of the Year for 2010, received his education at Yale University, which filled out what he had already received at his mother's knee in the all-important areas of Shakespeare, Greek art and architecture, and the Italian Renaissance. He restores Greek Revival buildings and appears in television, film, and on stage whenever the pilasters and entablatures overwhelm him.

Susan Boyce is an audiobook narrator and an actor who has worked onstage at Trinity Repertory Theater, Worcester Foothills Theater, the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and every major ragtime and traditional jazz festival in the United States. She has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards.

Ralph Lister is an actor, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He spent fifteen years in London theater before moving to the United States to focus on film and television. He has held numerous roles in Shakespeare and modern dramas, as well as starring roles in independent films. His voice and character work can be heard in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland 13 Going On 30. He lives in Los Angeles.