My creative writing classes keeps me reading The Best American Short Stories each year, but looking back through my notes, it appears that I don’t typically write about it, which is a shame! This year’s story collection was edited by Lauren Groff, who I have been reading and enjoying lately. (Though honestly I typically don’t have a sense of an editor’s taste from one year to the next.)

This year’s collection was epic and stunning as always. In my opinion, these anthologies are the single best way to get a sense of contemporary writing, although the works remain fairly conservative in their form and approach. These are all typical short stories.

One of the most memorable stories this year had abuse in it. As I think back over the years, I now realize that some of the stories that stand out the most have featured some type of abuse. Not because they are better stories, but because they can be so traumatizing to the reader. I don’t like it and seem to get increasingly sensitive to it with each passing year. I even think the series may need to start integrating trigger warnings. Maybe literary fiction more broadly needs to integrate trigger warnings. And, yet, as I write this, I am aware that the trigger warning significantly changes the reading experience. I don’t have the answers. I think this work should exist. It lends insight into the human condition. Even still, at this point I can’t help but think that the subtler works are the greater works.