It's that time again, time to surprise, delight, and provoke you with Selected Shorts's

annual celebration of fiction from the Best American Short Stories. Join reader Cynthia

Nixon and me, Meg Wallitzer, for stories of the unexpected from the 2025 volume,

edited by the author of Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ing.

One of our favorite things to do at Selected Shorts is to celebrate each year's new volume of the Best American Short Stories.

Not only do we often discover new and exciting writers and get to read their arresting and powerful works,

we get to hear how each year's guest editor created their list of bests.

I myself was guest editor in 2017,

and I enjoyed sharing that process. The guest editor of the 2025 volume was the novelist

Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts.

And we've chosen two stories that reflect some of the big things

Ng was thinking about when she made her selections,

that fiction provides insight into the actual world,

and that stories build empathy by asking us to imagine ourselves

in someone else's position.

Here is the series editor Nicole Lammy speaking about working with

Ing on this year's story selection.

I read more than 3,000 stories this year. So I don't get out much.

But the stories I read have been excellent company, as has Celeste Ing.

I was so lucky to have the chance to work with Celeste.

I knew her a little before this year, so I was confident that she had the two most important qualities for this job.

She's a very fast reader, and she has excellent taste. What surprised me, though, was her

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