"Without stories, we cannot live well," shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home. Enlightening, poignant, and undeniably human, the stories in this anthology bravely confront societal darkness and offer, in Lee's words, "our emotional truths, restoring our sanity and providing comfort for the days ahead."

The Best American Short Stories 2023 includes Cherline Bazile - Maya Binyam - Tom Bissell - Taryn Bowe - Da-Lin - Benjamin Ehrlich- Sara Freeman - Lauren Groff - Nathan Harris - Jared Jackson - Sana Krasikov - Danica Li - Ling Ma - Manuel Muñoz - Joanna Pearson - Souvankham Thammavongsa - Kosiso Ugwueze - Corinna Vallianatos - Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi - Esther Yi

Pitlor, Heidi

Lee, Min Jin

MIN JIN LEE is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lee is the recipient of the 2022 Manhae Grand Prize for Literature from South Korea and of fellowships in fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a writer-in-residence at Amherst College and serves as a trustee of PEN America and a director of the Authors Guild. She is at work on her third novel, American Hagwon, and a nonfiction work, Name Recognition.