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:
“Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“the tide lays down its wet throat
and alters the land to island—even as I watch
I say there is no shore
apart from stories of it,
no smoke, no hut, no beacon ...”
—Lynn Emanuel (b. 1949)
“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.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)