And honorable mentions.

I don’t remember when I read Lauren Groff’s short story collections—Delicate Edible Birds and Florida—but once I did I couldn’t stop, I didn’t want to stop, I wished I had all the time in the world to read the stories again. That never happened to me before. Now, writing short stories—especially stories where my protagonist is living in a city or a small town in Ethiopia and she faces a big challenge while she is living her life—where I get to show Ethiopia’s culture through my characters is my favorite thing in life. I want to write stories that would make a reader wish that they want to read the stories, slowly, as if they have all the time in the world.

I read short stories—sometimes for the story, sometimes to study the craft, sometimes for the pure pleasure of immersing myself in the story’s world.

Here’re my 5 favorite short story collections I read in 2023:

• The Faraway World, Patricia Engel

Set in Cuba, Columbia, and the United States, everyone wants to be somewhere else in these stories. My favorite from this collection is Libélula—there’s an unexpected love the main character has for her employer. I love it when stories surprise me and this one has surprises in spades.

• The Disappeared, Andrew Porter

These days, when I read, I pay attention to prose, the way sentences flow. I used to think long sentences were hard to read but not anymore. In this collection, there are so many long sentences that made me want to go back and read them again—not because I didn’t understand but because the sentences were so beautiful, so lyrical, that I wanted to read them again, not when the story ended but now, right now when I just read them.

In this collection, people have disappeared literally or metaphorically. The story that stayed the most with me is Breathe—because of a simple, yet powerful, dialogue a son says to his father after a horrible experience. “Why weren’t you there?” You have to read to find out what the boy is asking his father about.

• The Sorrows of Others, Ada Zhang

I love reading about characters who come from two places, who have two different cultures. In this collection, we have characters who are Chinese and Americans, and both. What struck me is the implied histories of each character—we get the feeling that their backstories, even though they were not written on the page, have shaped them to who they are now. Anyone who lived in one place and now lives in another place will relate to these stories.

• God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, Arinze Ifeakandu

My goodness, this one surprised me the most. I’m someone who cries when I watch a heart-clutching movie or read a moving story but these stories made me cry. So. Many. Times. At. So. Many. Heart-shattering. Moments.

This year, I recommended this one to friends and colleagues the most. So many things to love in this collection—the cultural material infused in the stories, nothing is explained for a white reader, phrases in Nigerian languages aren’t translated (this is my favorite part!), and the language—characters use one language for business, another for hooking up, another for intimate relationships, another for banter, and so on.

• Call Up The Waters, Amber Caron

A mother digs the ground—to find water, water that’s no longer there. That’s the title story and it’s my favorite one from this collection. In these stories, the setting—the natural landscapes—is not just a setting but another significant character. When I first held this book in my hands, I remember staring at the beautiful cover image. What an image that shows the theme of the whole book—nature!

Honorable Mentions (except the last one in the list, these were published in 2023):

• Beijing Sprawl, Xu Zechen
• I Am My Country, Kenan Orhan
• The Hive and the Honey, Paul Yoon
• Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
• Temple Folk, Aaliyah Bilal
• The King Is Always Above the People, Daniel Alarcon

And a few more (not story collections but a single story):

• What It’s Worth Giving Up to Stay in a Family (Via Electric Lit)
• One More Night Behind the Walls by Peter Mountford
• No Depth Can Bury the Family Guilt, Electric Literature
• Thursday, George Saunders
• Betrayed By the City That Raised Me, Annesha Mitha