In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor Jesmyn Ward says that the best fiction offers the reader a "sense of repair." The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an Indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you "forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew"--Book jacket.

This book presents a selection of the best works of short fiction of 2019, from a variety of acclaimed sources.

Hand-picked authors and a literary legacy... You may want to read it in one quick bite... Or savor it slowly like fine Swiss chocolate... One delicious prose at a time! For 22 years, SF lovers from around the world have enjoyed the stories and poems of the Tesseracts series, ( Tesseracts One through Tesseracts Ten , and Tesseracts Q ). This unique collection of books has featured the work of some of Canada's finest speculative fiction writers, selected and edited by ever changing combinations of editors, hand-picked for each edition. For many science fiction writers, Tesseracts was a spring board to their fame. Tesseracts Eleven brings the series to a new height, with a tasty blend of past and present writers, with their own individual visions of the future. The literature of Tesseracts Eleven has been critically selected and shaped into the collection you see by this year's editors, two of Canada's finest writers - acclaimed authors Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips. Together they have chosen a powerful combination of works by well-known writers, as well as newer authors whose futures you will want to follow. Some favorite Tesseracts ingredients are a featured part of this edition's literary blend: some very popular award winning names in Canada's SF scene, like Canada's grand dame of speculative fiction, Elisabeth Vonarburg, Claude Lalumiere, David Nickle and Candas Jane Dorsey, to name just a few. As well, readers will find some bright new stars in the science fiction world like Yukon's Jerome Stueart, or Calgary's Susan Forest - just 2 of the delicious authors featured in this fine offering. All told, Doctorow and Phillips have presented 22 pieces of literary delights to tantalize your imagination, and although you may want to consume the book in one sitting - take your time, and savor each exquisite morsel - delight in every bite. Grab your favorite beverage, settle down, and enjoy the latest in Canada's literary legacy - Tesseracts Eleven

"Twelve exquisitely written stories depicting the search for human connection and the attempt to fit in far from home. All the Shining People explores migration, diaspora, and belonging within Toronto's Jewish South African community, as individuals come to terms with the oppressive hierarchies that separate, and the connections that bind. Seeking a place to belong, the book's characters -- including a life-drawing model searching the streets for her lover; a woman confronting secrets from her past in the new South Africa; and a man grappling with the legacy of his father, a former political prisoner -- crave authentic relationships that replicate the lost feeling of home. With its focus on family, culture, and identity, All the Shining People captures the experiences of immigrants and outsiders with honesty, subtlety, and deep sympathy."--

Original and effortlessly clever, the stories in I Know Who You Remind Me of capture the sensibility of a generation with no cultural inhibitions to overcome. Naomi K. Lewis's characters bear the battlescars of adolescence and early adulthood - scars left when one classmate impersonates another in Internet pornography; a lover donates his eyeball in the heat of passion; sibling rivalry escalates into a low orbit. For these characters, everything is straight-on, never coy, and often deliciously funny.

"When Elaine Levine's eccentric older brother, Isaac, moves back from LA to the quiet suburb of Thornhill, Ontario, to help her care for her suddenly motherless grandchildren, he finds himself embroiled in even more neighbourhood drama than he would like. Meanwhile, a nanny, miles from her own family in the Philippines, cares for a young boy who doesn't fit in at school. In a house down the street, a young mother is given the news that her marriage is over by her mother-in-law while her husband sits silent. And a woman in mid-life contends with the task of cleaning out the house in which she grew up, while her teenage son struggles with why his dad moved out. This stunningly intimate collection of stories, which spans fifteen years in the lives of the Levine family and the other characters, is an exquisite portrait of a Jewish community, the secular and religious families who inhabit it, and the tensions that exist there, by a writer with a keen eye for detail, a gentle sense of humour, and an immense literary talent."--

"Levine is a true artist, who grinds his bones--and anything else he can get his hands on--to make his bread." -- The Sunday Times Reminiscent of Bernard Malamud and Cynthia Ozick, Norman Levine's short fiction was largely ignored in his lifetime. Yet they remain some of the most skillfully-crafted and moving works of the last half of the twentieth century. Taken together, these stories make a convincing argument for Levine's mastery, and as a writer in need of urgent rediscovery.