The Best American Series® First, Best, and Best-Selling The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind. The Best American Short Stories 2012 includes Nathan Englander, Mary Gaitskill, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Haigh, Steven Millhauser, Alice Munro, Lawrence Osborne, Eric Puchner, George Saunders, Kate Walbert, and others   "The best short storiees are small only when measured by the number of pages. Editor Tom Perrotta, best known for his novels Election and Little Children assembles a stellar collection of 20 stories that create their own worlds in 20 pages or less."- USA TODAY Tom Perrotta explains in his introduction that all of [these stories] took me somewhere I didn t expect to go, and jolted me into that state of heightened awareness and emotional receptivity that s one of the great rewards of reading good fiction. The characters in these stories seek to discover something lacking in their life. Their stories take sharp and surprising turns and often reach dazzling conclusions. In Nathan Englander s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a playful discussion between two married couples veers into darker territory, exposing a secret that might have been better left unspoken. Taiye Selasi writes a portrait of a motherless girl on the cusp of pubescence in Africa where womanhood may not be something to be celebrated. What s Important Is Feeling by Adam Wilson gives us a window onto a movie set where the narrator aches for something cinematic to happen in his life. Roxane Gay s North Country introduces us to an unlikely couple who circle each other in a wary dance of approach and avoidance. An unexpected visitor with a brown glass bottle kicks off a wonderfully strange fable about how we look at ourselves in Steven Millhauser s Miracle Polish. Full of clear, idiosyncratic voices and intriguing points of view, this multifaceted collection will reward readers. And, as Perrotta unapologetically states, By any standard, this year s batch of stories is pretty damn good. " The Best American Series(r) First, Best, and Best-Selling The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. The Best American Short Stories 2012 includes Nathan Englander, Mary Gaitskill, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Haigh, Steven Millhauser, Alice Munro, Lawrence Osborne, Eric Puchner, George Saunders, Kate Walbert, and others [INSERT AUTHOR PHOTO] TOM PERROTTA, editor, is the author of seven books, including Bad Haircut , The Abstinence Teacher , and most recently The Leftovers . His novels Election and Little Children were made into acclaimed and award-winning movies. Look for the other best-selling titles in the Best American series: THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING www.bestamericanshortstories.com " TOM PERROTTA is the author of six works of fiction, most recently The Leftovers , published to wide acclaim in September 2011.  His novels Election and Little Children were made into award-winning movies. 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.