Status Updates From The Best American Short Sto...

Read “Omakase” by Weike Wang, a phenomenally strong final entry in what was a very strong collection of stories.

Read Jenn Alandy Trahan’s excellent “They Told Us Not to Say This”

Read Mona Simpson’s phenomenal “Wrong Object”

Read Jim Shepard’s “Our Day of Grace.” I’ve always enjoyed epistolary works, especially when the letter writers’ voices feel authentic, and Shepard does a good job of that here.

Read Alexis Schaitkin’s “Natural Disasters,” the first story in this anthology that didn’t really work for me. There were some nice moments, but overall the whole thing felt like a big reach for profundity without much to back it up.

Read Saĩd Sayrafiezadeh’s excellent “Audition”.

Read the fantastically imaginative, creepy, and incisive “Black Corfu” by Karen Russell.

Read Maria Reva’s fantastic, darkly funny “Letter of Apology”

Read Sigrid Nunez’s disturbing, vivid “The Plan”

Read Manuel Muñoz’s devastating “Anyone Can Do It”

Read the late, great Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Pity and Shame,” lovely, intimate portrait of two lonely souls.

Read Nicole Krauss’s “Seeing Ershadi,” the prose of which is quite lovely, but I’m not sure of how it all ties together.

Read Ella Martinsen Gorham’s “Protozoa,” and incisive and disturbing glimpse into the Social Media-driven life of an adolescent girl.

Read Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Bronze,” which definitely went in some effectively surprising directions.

Read Julia Elliott’s excellent “Hellion”

Read Deborah Eisenberg’s fascinating “The Third Tower.”

Read Jamel Brinkley’s touching, disturbingly sexy, keenly observed “No More Than a Bubble.”

Read Wendell Berry’s surprisingly layered, wonderfully titled “The Great Interruption: The Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to Be Told (1935-1978)”.

Read Kathleen Alcott’s “Natural Light,” an incisively written account of a daughter discovering a previously unknown chapter of her late mother’s life.

Read Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s fascinating “The Era”