The Best American Short Stories 2020

By Curtis Sittenfeld and Heidi Pitlor

“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

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781328484109

Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, and Sisterland, which have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her nonfiction has been published widely, including in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, Vanity Fair, and Glamour and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in St. Louis.

Reviews for The Best American Short Stories 2020

[lisapeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was fine but didn't knock me out as a collection, though all the stories were well done. Maybe there were too many variations on a similar theme, a lot of drifting young adults and teenagers, and a few adults, who just seem a bit unmoored from life. Standouts for me were T.C. Boyle's "The Apartment," because it was just such a T.C. Boyle story; Michael Byers's "Sibling Rivalry," because it was a totally believable sf story all by itself in the collection; and Elizabeth McCracken's "It's Not You," because she's always so good. Looking back through them, I actually liked almost all of them—there was just nothing that left me going, "Wow, how'd they DO that?" Which is probably an awful lot to ask of a writer, I know.