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:
“You can write anything you want to,—a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What’s the use? You can never be smarter than you are.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“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)
“The Heavenly eye,
Much wider than the sky,
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A small and little thing!”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)