The Best American Short Stories 2020

“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 T. C. BOYLE • EMMA CLINE • MARY GAITSKILL 

ANDREA LEE • ELIZABETH McCRACKEN • ALEJANDRO PUYANA WILLIAM PEI SHIH • KEVIN WILSON and others

CURTIS SITTENFELD is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and the forthcoming Rodham, which have been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of the short story collection You Think It, I'll Say It and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories. Her nonfiction has been published inthe New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Glamour, and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in Minneapolis.

Heidi Pitlor is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and has been the series editor for The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays, The Daylight Marriage, and Impersonation.

CURTIS SITTENFELD is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and the forthcoming Rodham, which have been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of the short story collection You Think It, I'll Say It and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories. Her nonfiction has been published inthe New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Glamour, and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in Minneapolis.