Short Stories Included
| Author | Story | Where story previously appeared |
| T. C. Boyle | "Admiral" | Harper's Magazine |
| Kevin Brockmeier | "The Year of Silence" | Ecotone |
| Karen Brown | "Galatea" | Crazyhorse |
| Katie Chase | "Man and Wife" | The Missouri Review |
| Danielle Evans | "Virgins" | Paris Review |
| Allegra Goodman | "Closely Held" | Ploughshares |
| A. M. Homes | "May We Be Forgiven" | Granta |
| Nicole Krauss | "From the Desk of Daniel Varsky" | Harper's Magazine |
| Jonathan Lethem | "The King of Sentences" | The New Yorker |
| Rebecca Makkai | "The Worst You Ever Feel" | Shenandoah |
| Steven Millhauser | "The Wizard of West Orange" | Harper's Magazine |
| Daniyal Mueenuddin | "Nawabdin Electrician" | The New Yorker |
| Alice Munro | "Child's Play" | Harper's Magazine |
| Miroslav Penkov | "Buying Lenin" | The Southern Review |
| Karen Russell | "Vampires in the Lemon Grove" | Zoetrope |
| George Saunders | "Puppy" | The New Yorker |
| Christine Sneed | "Quality of Life" | The New England Review |
| Bradford Tice | "Missionaries" | The Atlantic Monthly |
| Mark Wisniewski | "Straightaway" | The Antioch Review |
| Tobias Wolff | "Bible" | The Atlantic Monthly |
Read more about this topic: The Best American Short Stories 2008
Famous quotes containing the words short, stories and/or included:
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“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
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“People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent “the past” and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.”
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