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A collection of the year's best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn WardIn her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor Jesmyn Ward says that the best fiction offers the reader a “sense of repair.” The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you “forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew.'The Best American Short Stories 2021 includes GABRIEL BUMP • BRANDON HOBSON • DAVID MEANS• JANE PEK • TRACEY ROSE PEYTON • GEORGE SAUNDERS • BRYAN WASHINGTON • KEVIN WILSON • C PAM ZHANG and others

“Twenty masterfully crafted short stories” by T.C. Boyle, Emma Cline, Mary Gaitskill, and more: “Outstanding and well worth the read.” —Booklist (starred review)“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.”Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To read these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish. The Best American Short Stories 2020 includes selections by: T. C. BOYLE • EMMA CLINE • MARY GAITSKILL • ANDREA LEE • ELIZABETH McCRACKEN • ALEJANDRO PUYANA • WILLIAM PEI SHIH • KEVIN WILSON • JANE PEK • CAROLYN FERRELL • SCOTT NADELSON • MENG JIN • and more

“The lessons and the antidotes and the essays that went into Consider This were originally written for The Cult website. The stories that went into Burnt Tongues were exercises based on those lessons. So if you like Consider This, please check out Burnt Tongues and see how those lessons were put into practice.” —Chuck Palahniuk Transgressive fiction authors write stories some are afraid to tell. Stories with taboo subjects, unique voices, shocking images—nothing safe or dry. Burnt Tongues is a collection of transgressive stories selected by a rigorous nomination and vetting process and hand-selected by Chuck Palahniuk, bestselling author of Fight Club, as the best of The Cult workshop. These stories run the gamut from horrific and fantastic to humorous and touching, but each leaves a lasting impression. Some may say even a scar.

Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original.The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.List of 2019 winners:Tessa Hadley John Keeble Moira McCavana Rachel Kondo Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Stephanie Reents Alexia Arthurs Valerie O'Riordan Patricia Engel Kenan Orhan Sarah Hall Bryan Washington Isabella Hammad Weike Wang Caoilinn Hughes Souvankham Thammavongsa Liza Ward Doua Thao Alexander MacLeod John Edgar WidemanPrize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar

A glittering landscape of twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and envision new futures for America—from N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, and more.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY In these tumultuous times, in our deeply divided country, many people are angry, frightened, and hurting. Knowing that imagining a brighter tomorrow has always been an act of resistance, editors Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams invited an extraordinarily talented group of writers to share stories that explore new forms of freedom, love, and justice. They asked for narratives that would challenge oppressive American myths, release us from the chokehold of our history, and give us new futures to believe in. They also asked that the stories be badass. The result is this spectacular collection of twenty-five tales that blend the dark and the light, the dystopian and the utopian. These tales are vivid with struggle and hardship—whether it's the othered and the terrorized, or dragonriders and covert commandos—but these characters don't flee, they fight.Thrilling, inspiring, and a sheer joy to read, A People's Future of the United States is a gift for anyone who believes in our power to dream a just world.Featuring stories by Violet Allen • Charlie Jane Anders • Lesley Nneka Arimah • Ashok K. Banker • Tobias S. Buckell • Tananarive Due • Omar El Akkad • Jamie Ford • Maria Dahvana Headley • Hugh Howey • Lizz Huerta • Justina Ireland • N. K. Jemisin • Alice Sola Kim • Seanan McGuire • Sam J. Miller • Daniel José Older • Malka Older • Gabby Rivera • A. Merc Rustad • Kai Cheng Thom • Catherynne M. Valente • Daniel H. Wilson • G. Willow Wilson • Charles Yu

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired their stories, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.'The Tomb of Wrestling,'Jo Ann Beard, Tin House'Counterblast,'Marjorie Celona, The Southern Review'Nayla,'Youmna Chlala, Prairie Schooner'Lucky Dragon,'Viet Dinh, Ploughshares'Stop'n'Go,'Michael Parker, New England Review'Past Perfect Continuous,'Dounia Choukri, Chicago Quarterly Review'Inversion of Marcia,'Thomas Bolt, n+1'Nights in Logar,'Jamil Jan Kochai, A Public Space'How We Eat,'Mark Jude Poirier, Epoch'Deaf and Blind,'Lara Vapnyar, The New Yorker'Why Were They Throwing Bricks?,'Jenny Zhang, n+1'An Amount of Discretion,'Lauren Alwan, The Southern Review'Queen Elizabeth,'Brad Felver, One Story'The Stamp Collector,'Dave King, Fence'More or Less Like a Man,'Michael Powers, The Threepenny Review'The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies,'Jo Lloyd, Zoetrope'Up Here,'Tristan Hughes, Ploughshares'The Houses That Are Left Behind,'Brenda Walker, The Kenyon Review'We Keep Them Anyway,'Stephanie A. Vega, The Threepenny Review'Solstice,'Anne Enright, The New YorkerPrize Jury for 2018: Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, Elizabeth Tallent

“A delight and highly recommended.” —Booklist “Showcases the truth and fullness of people of color.” —Book Riot In the tradition of Best American Short Stories comes Everyday People: The Color of Life, a dazzling collection of contemporary short fiction.Everyday People is a thoughtfully curated anthology of short stories that presents new and renowned work by established and emerging writers of color. It illustrates the dynamics of character and culture that reflect familial strife, political conflict, and personal turmoil through an array of stories that reveal the depth of the human experience. Representing a wide range of styles, themes, and perspectives, these selected stories depict moments that linger—crossroads to be navigated, relationships, epiphanies, and times of doubt, loss, and discovery. A celebration of writing and expression, Everyday People brings to light the rich tapestry that binds us all. The contributors are an eclectic mix of award-winning and critically lauded writers, including Mia Alvar, Carleigh Baker, Nana Brew-Hammond, Glendaliz Camacho, Alexander Chee, Mitchell S. Jackson, Yiyun Li, Allison Mills, Courttia Newland, Denne Michele Norris, Jason Reynolds, Nelly Rosario, Hasanthika Sirisena, and Brandon Taylor. Some of the proceeds from the sale of Everyday People will benefit the Rhode Island Writers Colony, a nonprofit organization founded by the late Brook Stephenson that provides space for speculation, production, and experimentation by writers of color.

Best-selling, award-winning, pop culture powerhouse Roxane Gay guest edits this year's Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction. “I am looking for the artful way any given story is conveyed,” writes Roxane Gay in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2018, “but I also love when a story has a powerful message, when a story teaches me something about the world.” The artful, profound, and sometimes funny stories Gay chose for the collection transport readers from a fraught family reunion to an immigration detention center, from a psychiatric hospital to a coed class sleepover in a natural history museum. We meet a rebellious summer camper, a Twitter addict, and an Appalachian preacher—all characters and circumstances that show us what we “need to know about the lives of others.”

Belly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained.

'I remember I believed all my problems would be solved, if only I were beautiful. Then I was beautiful.'—Jonathan Mack, from his story'The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked.'Welcome to the worlds of the disabled. The physically disabled. The mentally disabled. The emotionally disabled. What does that word'disabled'mean anyway? Is there a right way to be crippled? Editors Sheila Black and Michael Northen (co-editors of the highly praised anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability) join newcomer Annabelle Hayse to present short stories by Dagoberto Gilb, Anne Finger, Stephen Kuusisto, Thom Jones, Lisa Gill, Floyd Skloot, and others. These authors—all who experience the'disability'they write about—crack open the cage of our culture's stereotypes. We look inside, and, through these people we thought broken, we uncover new ways of seeing and knowing.

The New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings compiles a stunning anthology of literary short fiction with T.C. Boyle, Emma Cline and others. “If you know exactly what you are going to get from the experience of reading a story, you probably wouldn't go looking for it; you need, in order to be an open reader of fiction, to be willing. To cast a vote for what you love and then wait for the outcome,” writes Meg Wolitzer in her introduction to this volume. The Best American Short Stories 2017 casts a vote for and celebrates all that is our country. Here you'll find a man with a boyfriend and a girlfriend, naval officers trapped on a submarine, a contestant on America's Funniest Home Videos, and a gay man desperate to be a father—unforgettable characters waiting for an outcome, burning with stories to tell. The Best American Short Stories 2017 includes entries by T.C. Boyle, Jai Chakrabarti, Emma Cline, Danielle Evans, Lauren Groff, Eric Puchner, Jim Shepard, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jenn Walter and others.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time'I can't recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I'm shocked and scandalized. She's brilliant, this young woman.'—David Sedaris Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel. And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called'an American classic.'To read his fiction is to feel more alive -- connected, incandescently, to'the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience,'as one of his characters puts it. These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While -- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery -- have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. The winning stories span the globe—from the glamorous Riviera to an Eastern European shtetl, from a Native American reservation to a tiny village in Thailand. But their characters are universally recognizable and utterly compelling, whether they are ex-pats in Africa, migrant workers crossing the Mexican border, Armenian immigrants on the rough streets of East Hollywood, or pioneers in nineteenth-century Idaho. Accompanying the stories are the editor's introduction, essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. Finding Billy White Feather PERCIVAL EVERETT The Seals LYDIA DAVIS Kilifi Creek LIONEL SHRIVER The Happiest Girl in the Whole USAMANUEL MUÑOZ A Permanent Member of the Family RUSSELL BANKS A Ride out of Phrao DINA NAYERI OwlEMILY RUSKOVICH The Upside-Down World BECKY HAGENSTON The Way Things Are Going LYNN FREED The History of Happiness BRENDA PEYNADO The Kingsley Drive Chorus NAIRA KUZMICH Word of Mouth EMMA TÖRZS Cabins CHRISTOPHER MERKNER My Grandmother Tells Me This Story MOLLY ANTOPOL The Golden Rule LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ About My Aunt JOAN SILBER Ba Baboon THOMAS PIERCE Snow Blind ELIZABETH STROUT I, Buffalo VAUHINI VARA Birdsong from the Radio ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN For author interviews, photos, and more, go to www.ohenryprizestories.com

The acclaimed author presents an anthology of “confrontational and at times confounding... stories to get lost in” by Colum McCann, Victor Lodato and others (Kirkus Reviews). In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, “The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius... modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition.” Boyle's choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is “what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year's selections.” The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes entries by Denis Johnson, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth McCracken, Aria Beth Sloss, Thomas McGuane, and others.

The 2014 STORGY Short Story Competition Anthology celebrates the continued resurgence of the short story genre and showcases some of the most talented up-and-coming authors from across the world. This outstanding collection features all fourteen finalists and competitions winners, as judged by critically-acclaimed author David James Poissant. These wonderfully diverse short stories will move, amuse, unsettle, and entertain, combining to create the most eclectic collection available online.Stories by competition winner Rowena Macdonald; runners-up Karina Evans and Juliet Hill; and finalists: H C Child, Curtis Dickerson, Aleksei Drakos, Lucy Durneen, Sarah Evans, Rab Ferguson, Dyane Forde, Thomas Stewart, Scott Palmer, Chris Arp, and Jacqueline Horrix. This edition also contains author forewords, interviews, and exclusive artwork by STORGY illustrator Harlot Von Charlotte.

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012 gathers twenty of the best short stories of the year, selected from thousands published in literary magazines. These remarkable stories explore the boundaries of the imagination in settings as various as an army training camp in China, the salt mines of Detroit, a divided Balkan town, and the eye of a hurricane. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

Twenty of the best American short stories of 2011, chosen by the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Chord. The twenty tightly crafted stories collected here by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Geraldine Brooks are full of deftly drawn characters, universal truths, and often surprising humor. Richard Powers's “To the Measures Fall” is a comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life. In the satirical “The Sleep,” Caitlin Horrocks puts her fictional prairie town to bed—the inhabitants hibernate through the long winter as a form of escape—while in Steve Millhauser's imagined town, the citizens are visited by ghostlike apparitions in “Phantoms.” Allegra Goodman's spare but beautiful “La Vita Nuova” finds a jilted fiancée letting her art class paint all over her wedding dress as a poignant act of release. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wryly captures the social change in the air in Lagos, Nigeria, in “Ceiling,” her story of a wealthy young man who is not entirely at ease with what his life has become. As Brooks perused these richly imagined and varied landscapes, she found that it was like walking into the best kind of party, where you can hole up in a corner with old friends for a while, then launch out among interesting strangers.The Best American Short Stories 2011 also includes contributions from: Megan Mayhew Bergman · Tom Bissell • Jennifer Egan • Nathan Englander • Ehud Havazelet • Bret Anthony Johnston • Claire Keegan • Sam Lipsyte • Rebecca Makkai • Elizabeth McCracken • Ricardo Nuila • Joyce Carol Oates • Jess Row • George Saunders • Mark Slouka

Edited and with contributions by Owen King (We're All in This Together) and John McNally (America's Report Card this anthology enriches the superhero canon immeasurably.Twenty-two of today's most talented writers (and comics fans) unite in Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology featuring brand-new superheroes equipped for the threats and challenges of the twenty-first century -- with a few supervillains thrown in for good measure. With mutations stranger than the X-Men and with even more baggage than the Hulk, this next generation of superheroes is a far cry from your run-of-the-mill caped crusader. From the image-conscious and not-very-mysterious masked meathead who swoops in and sweeps the tough girl reporter off her feet; to the Meerkat, who overcomes his species'cute and cuddly image to become the resident hero in a small Midwestern city; to the Silverfish,'the creepy superhero,'who fights crime while maintaining the slipperiest of identities; to Manna Man, who manipulates the minds of televangelists to serve his own righteous mission, these protectors (and in some cases antagonizers) of the innocent and the virtuous will delight literary enthusiasts and comic fans alike. With stunning illustrations by artist Chris Burnham, Who Can Save Us Now? offers a vibrant, funny, and truly unusual array of characters and their stories.

“Delightful... A treat for dictionary hounds and vocabulary-challenged word lovers everywhere.”—BooklistFor most of us, these prizewinning spelling bee words would be difficult to pronounce, let alone spell. We asked twenty-one of today's most talented and inventive writers to go even further and pen an original tale inspired by one of dozens of obscure and fascinating championship words. The result is Logorrhea—a veritable dictionary of the weird, the fantastic, the haunting, and the indefinable that will have you spellbound from the very first page.Including twenty-one stories and the inscrutable words that inspired them:Chiaroscuro: “The Chiaroscurist” by Hal Duncan Lyceum: “Lyceum” by Liz Williams Vivisepulture: “Vivisepulture” by David Prill Eczema: “Eczema” by Clare Dudman Sacrilege, Semaphore: “Semaphore” by Alex Irvine Smaragdine: “The Smaragdine Knot” by Marly Youmans Insouciant: “A Portrait in Ivory” by Michael Moorcock Cambist: “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics” by Daniel Abraham Logorrhea: “Logorrhea” by Michelle Richmond Pococurante: “Pococurante” by Anna Tambour Autochthonous: “From Around Here” by Tim Pratt Vignette: “Vignette” by Elizabeth Hand Sycophant: “Plight of the Sycophant” by Alan DeNiro Elegiacal: “The Last Elegy” by Matthew Cheney Eudaemonic: “Eudaemonic” by Jay Caselberg Macerate: “Softer” by Paolo Bacigalupi Transept: “Crossing the Seven” by Jay Lake Psoriasis: “Tsuris” by Leslie What Euonym: “The Euonymist” by Neil Williamson Dulcimer: “Singing of Mount Abora” by Theodora Goss Appoggiatura: “Appoggiatura” by Jeff VanderMeer“This book is a logophile's dream—a left-field collection of stories inspired by winning words from the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Anyone who has ever spent an hour or two happily browsing the pages of a dictionary will find something to love here.”—Kevin Brockmeier, author of A Brief History of the Dead

Chick lit: A genre of fiction that often recycles the following plot: Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming. This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America's most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth. The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind. Including these original stories:“The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Two Days” by Aimee Bender “An Open Letter to Doctor X” by Francine Prose “Gabe” by Holiday Reinhorn “Documents of Passion Love” by Carolyn Ferrell “Volunteers Are Shining Stars” by Curtis Sittenfeld “Selling the General” by Jennifer Egan “The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge” by Dika Lam “Love Machine” by Samantha Hunt “Ava Bean” by Jennifer S. Davis “Embrace” by Roxana Robinson “The Epiphany Branch” by Mary Gordon “Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” by Judy Budnitz “Gabriella, My Heart” by Cristina Henríquez “The Red Coat” by Caitlin Macy “The Matthew Effect” by Binnie Kirshenbaum “The Recipe” by Lynne Tillman “Meaning of Ends” by Martha WittPraise for This Is Not Chick Lit “This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I'll know we're getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”—Gloria Steinem “These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”—Elle

“In twenty-nine separate but ingenious ways, these stories seek permanent residence within a reader. They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go.... If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them.” —Ben Marcus, from the IntroductionAward-winning author of Notable American Women Ben Marcus brings us this engaging and comprehensive collection of short stories that explore the stylistic variety of the medium in America today.Sea Oak by George SaundersEverything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells TowerDo Not Disturb by A.M. HomesThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee BenderThe Caretaker by Anthony DoerrThe Old Dictionary by Lydia DavisThe Father's Blessing by Mary CaponegroThe Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders by Aleksandar HemonPeople Shouldn't Have to be the Ones to Tell You by Gary LutzHistories of the Undead by Kate BravermanWhen Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine by Jhumpa LahiriDown the Road by Stephen DixonX Number of Possibilities by Joanna ScottTiny, Smiling Daddy by Mary GaitskillBrief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster WallaceThe Sound Gun by Matthew DerbyShort Talks by Anne CarsonField Events by Rick BassScarliotti and the Sinkhole by Padgett Powell