The Best American Short Stories 2021

by Jesmyn Ward, Heidi Pitlor

Overview

A collection of the year’s best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward

In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor JesmynWard 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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328485397
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Series:	Best American Series
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	197,629
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

JESMYN WARD received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008 to 2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010–2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Introduction xiii

To Buffalo Eastward from McSweeney's Gabriel Bump 1

The Miracle Girl from Virginia Quarterly Review Rita Chang-Eppig 15

Our Children from West Branch Vanessa Cuti 28

The Rest of Us from One Story Jenzo Duque 39

Escape from the Dysphesiac People from McSweeney's Brandon Hobson 53

Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain from The New Yorker Jamil Jan Kochai 64

Switzerland from The New Yorker Nicole Krauss 72

Clementine, Carmelita, Dog from Granta David Means 86

Paradise from The Southern Review Yxta Maya Murray 101

Good Boy from The Paris Review Eloghosa Osunde 116

Portrait of Two Young Ladies in White and Green Robes (Unidentified Artist, circa Sixteenth Century) from Conjunctions Jane Pek 128

The Last Days of Rodney from American Short Fiction Tracey Rose Peyton 140

In This Sort of World, the Asshole Wins from The Cincinnati Review Christa Romanosky 154

Love Letter from The New Yorker George Saunders 168

A Way with Bea from The Paris Review Shanteka Sigers 175

Haguillory from Zoetrope: All-Story Stephanie Soileau 183

You Are My Dear Friend from The New Yorker Madhuri Vijay 195

Palaver from McSweeney's Bryan Washington 215

Biology from The Southern Review Kevin Wilson 227

Little Beast from BOMB C Pam Zhang 240

Contributors' Notes 255

Other Distinguished Stories of 2020 269

American and Canadian Magazines Publishing Short Stories 273

Editorial Reviews

"As guest editor of this year’s entry in the Best American Short Stories series, Ward has assembled a brilliant and moving collection...These 20 stories capture beautiful and devastating human experiences and the tales we tell to persevere. Contributors' captivating prose and incredible storytelling will plunge readers into fascinating worlds and challenge them to take on new perspectives."—Booklist, STARRED review   —

From the Publisher

The annual tradition of collecting a year's worth of memorable fiction continues with this audiobook. Story topics range widely and make for a varied anthology. One thing all the tales share in this audiobook version, though, is the astute pairing of each story with a specific narrator. In Shanteka Sigers’s "A Way With Bea," Bahni Turpin offers a vivid performance that transports listeners from the first sentence. Michael Crouch's rendition of "Biology," by Kevin Wilson, is at once heartbreaking and inspiring. The immersive nature of "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," by Jamil Jan Kochai, is thanks in large part to Adan Rocha's narrative skill. Every story is matched with its narrator so well that listeners will want to savor it slowly, following each performer briefly into another world. L.B.F. 2022 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

The annual tradition of collecting a year's worth of memorable fiction continues with this audiobook. Story topics range widely and make for a varied anthology. One thing all the tales share in this audiobook version, though, is the astute pairing of each story with a specific narrator. In Shanteka Sigers’s "A Way With Bea," Bahni Turpin offers a vivid performance that transports listeners from the first sentence. Michael Crouch's rendition of "Biology," by Kevin Wilson, is at once heartbreaking and inspiring. The immersive nature of "Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," by Jamil Jan Kochai, is thanks in large part to Adan Rocha's narrative skill. Every story is matched with its narrator so well that listeners will want to savor it slowly, following each performer briefly into another world. L.B.F. 2022 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2021 - AudioFile