The Best Short Stories 2021

The O. Henry Prize Winners

By: Jenny Minton Quigley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - editor

Narrated by: Maris Calin, Feodor Chin, Frankie Corzo, Gary Furlong, Deepti Gupta, Hillary Huber, Sullivan Jones, John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan, Adenrele Ojo, Fred Sanders, Bahni Turpin

Twenty prizewinning stories selected from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year—continuing the O. Henry Prize's century-long tradition of literary excellence.

"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction." —The Atlantic Monthly.

Now entering its second century, the prestigious annual story anthology has a new title, a new look, and a new guest editor. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and young emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Adichie, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.

Featured in this collection: Daphne Palasi Andreades • David Means • Sindya Bhanoo • Crystal Wilkinson • Alice Jolly • David Rabe • Karina Sainz Borgo (translator, Elizabeth Bryer) • Jamel Brinkley • Tessa Hadley • Adachioma Ezeano • Anthony Doerr • Tiphanie Yanique • Joan Silber • Jowhor Ile • Emma Cline • Asali Solomon • Ben Hinshaw • Caroline Albertine Minor (translator, Caroline Waight) • Jianan Qian • Sally Rooney

Critic reviews

"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction." --The Atlantic Monthly

A fine collection of short stories

I generally like the competing “The Best *American* Short Stories” a bit better than this series, but this is nevertheless a fine collection.
Occasionally, the same story will appear in both collections
The best story was: The Things We Worried About When I Was Ten
Other very good stories were:
Grief’s Garden
Freedom from Want
The Living Sea

The narration varies but is overall generally good to excellent

Fair

"The Best Short Stories for 2021" edited by Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie was rather disappointing to me, especially from a collection curated by such an interesting author.

Don't Waste Your Money

How can anyone think these plotless, abruptly ending, poorly written stories are worthy of print or an audiobook. I'm requesting a refund.

No lightness in this collection

Well crafted stories and artful narration, but so depressing. I powered through until the end, but I didn’t enjoy this collection.

The selections are from diverse authors and I like that. I am always trying to find light in this challenging world, but there is little light in this collection.

Depressing! Depressing! Depressing!

I can enjoy a hard hitting theme as much as anyone but it’s like they went searching for the most miserable collection of misfortune possible. I felt like throwing myself off the edge after about the 5th story 😭😭😭