Selected Shorts: The Best American Short Stories 2026 with Viet Thanh Nguyen

This is a live reading, not a staged play. For one evening only, actors stand on the Symphony Space stage and read short stories aloud while a guest host guides the night. It belongs to Selected Shorts, a long-running series that pairs actors with short fiction, both older and new, for a room of listeners.

This edition is the annual evening made in collaboration with the anthology The Best American Short Stories 2026. Viet Thanh Nguyen, the guest editor of that volume, is the host. The theater frames it as a night for established and emerging writers. The stories come from Akhil Sharma, Nathan Blum and Sigrid Nunez, though the theater has not published their titles.

The Best American Short Stories is a yearly anthology that began in 1915, when Edward O'Brien edited the first volume. Nguyen follows Celeste Ng, who edited the 2025 volume, and Lauren Groff, who edited the 2024 one.

Two of the writers have prize-winning novels. Akhil Sharma's An Obedient Father won the 2001 PEN/Hemingway Award, and his Family Life took the 2015 Folio Prize and the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award. Sigrid Nunez's The Friend won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.

Selected Shorts evenings are recorded for national public radio and for the Selected Shorts podcast. A livestream ticket is offered for this same evening alongside the in-person seats.

The Selected Shorts stage show began at Symphony Space in 1985, and Kay Cattarulla created it. Isaiah Sheffer, the venue's artistic director, hosted and directed the live events until his death in 2012. Sheffer and Allan Miller also founded Symphony Space, which grew out of the free Wall to Wall Bach marathon concert of January 9, 1978. Each evening in the live season is built around a theme.