Status Updates From The Best American Short Sto...

Read C. Pam Zhang’s brutal “Little Beast,” which I found especially chilling as a father hoping to cultivate strong relationships with my two young sons.

Read Kevin Wilson’s tender “Biology,” which didn’t quite reach the depths of feeling I think he was attempting to.

Read Bryan Washington’s “Palaver.” While I largely enjoyed his sharply witty dialogue, aspects of the mother-son dynamic felt a wee bit contrived.

Read Madhuri Vijay’s riveting and heartrending “You Are My Dear Friend”

Read Stephanie Soileau’s “Haguillory,” a brutally naked portrait of a racist, spiteful, cantankerous old southern white man and his wife.

Read Shanteka Sigers’ “A Way with Bea,” a wonderfully incisive and touching portrait of a teacher striving to reach and help a student others had given up on.

Read George Saunders’ brilliant “Love Letter,” a shining example of his deeply satirical and humane gifts at using speculative ideas to dissect our current political reality.

Read Christa Romanosky’s intense, drug-addled “In This Sort of World, the Asshole Wins,” which didn’t always ring as true as it could have, but which unflinchingly looked at the inner life of a drug-addicted mother of a toddler son.

Read Tracey Rose Peyton’s very moving “The Last Days of Rodney”

Read Jane Pek’s somewhat evocative but ultimately muddled “Portrait of Two Young Ladies in White and Green Robes (Unidentified Artist, circa Sixteenth Century).” I’m always drawn to work that attempts to examine the inner lives of fantastical beings, but something about this fell flat for me.

Read Eloghosa Osunde’s searingly personal, inspiring “Good Boy”

Read the incredibly intense, pulse-pounding “Paradise” by Yxta Maya Murray

Read David Means’s surprisingly effective “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog”

Read Nicole Krauss’s fascinating “Switzerland,” which explores the vulnerabilities of young women who are just beginning to explore their sexuality and agency. Krauss does an excellent job of leaning into painful and frightening ambiguities, although she does veer toward moments of being a bit too much on the nose.

Read Jamil Jan Kochai’s incredibly powerful, hallucinatory “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”

Read Brandon Hobson’s “Escape from the Dysphesiac People,” an achingly hypnotic tale of a young Native man who’s forcibly removed from his home.

Read Jenzo Duque’s bracingly personal portrait of second-generation Latino young men finding their way.

Read Rita Chang-Eppig’s intriguing but uneven “The Miracle Girl,” which finds fresh ways to interrogate missionaries’ racist work; and Vanessa Cuti’s “Our Children,” which features one of the most effectively shocking, upsetting turns I’ve ever read in a short story.

Read Gabriel Bump’s “To Buffalo Eastward,” which authentically captures a heartbroken young man’s compulsive behavior on a long road trip.