The Best American Short Stories 2020

Curtis Sittenfeld · Heidi Pitlor

Nov 2020 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

“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

About the author

Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld was born August 23, 1975 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is an American writer. Her titles include: Prep, the tale of a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams, a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love; and American Wife, a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush. Sittenfeld attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At Stanford, she studied Creative Writing. At the time, she was also chosen as one of Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. In 2018 she made the bestseller list with her title, You Think It, I'll Say It. 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.