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We had an event 10 days ago in New York and I had a series of it was a symphony space where they do selected shorts and they provided me with a couple of questions that that I thought I might want to talk a little bit about and the one the first one I read which chilled my blood was how does this year's edition of Best American Short Stories differ from all the other years and I I dutifully sat and thought about that for a long time and the only time the only thing that I could come up with is that I've been reading this wonderful anthology since 1978. The only thing I could think was different this year was this is the only year since 1978 and I've loved all 20 stories. But I would like to tell you a little bit about the selection process my selection process I think it's it's similar each year but each but each writer depending on his his his temperament and whatever other things he or she may have going on in their life at the moment determines when some write

some writers like to read these guest editors like to read the submissions blind. I decided not to do that early on because I discovered that I couldn't be blind to the extent that I wanted to be if you're going to be blind should be blind. And the problem is that when we get these stories. If you're a reader you're going to recognize some of them. You're going to recognize and and more than that if if Heidi sends me a story that was published in The New Yorker the fact that it's in The New Yorker is going to be perfectly clear to me even if the even if the author's name is you know we know we all know what a New Yorker story looks like. Even before we read it and then after we read it we still know. But but and there are certain writers that of course you know their style and it's and so an author with a particular style you're going to know or it's either George Saunders or someone who's gone to school on George Saunders And. And

so no matter how much you want to be blind you're not going to be. And so I decided early on to go about things in exactly the opposite way which was to instead of pretending to be blind when I wasn't and pretending not to know the typeface of Tenn house when I did or not to know what McSweeney's looked like. I just decided that I would try to read in addition to the hundred stories that I knew he was going to be sending me that I would read another hundred one hundred twenty five and just get around in in the world of literary magazines. And and I read as much as I could. I felt that I had a particular obligation to do that because I'm a novelist. And over what is now a career that's gone on longer than I ever imagined when I started. I've written a fair number of novels but one very slender book of short stories seven stories in it.

The entire Rousseau opus of short stories and of those seven stories actually three of those were outtakes from novels things that I had yanked out of novels and then kind of reformed to short fiction. So I what I really wanted to do is kind of submerge myself for a full year. Just reading is as many short stories as I could and the hundred that Heidi sent me were I mean I don't think there was anything on the of the other hundred fifty that I read that made it onto the final list. But but he did help me to to kind of retool and refit my imagination to an art form that I myself don't practice all that often. And it was wonderful. It was instructive. It was a marvelous experience that I had that I don't intend to do again real soon. But but was but was glorious for for the time that I did it. When you read

as I did then to you know 200 or so 200 plus short stories you discover first how much good short fiction there is out there. A lot of it. There are a lot of wonderfully talented writers many of whom you know but many of whom you don't. A few of whom are in this are in this collection. And so you become aware of this enormous literary landscape out there many of them young writers who are going to have a difficult time because as we all know there isn't there aren't as many outlets anymore and.