Are you searching for some of the best short story collections of 2023?  If so, you’re in luck!  We are sharing collections of the best collections of 2023 short stories being published this year.  The authors with books on this list, their works display impressive creativity, wit, and imagination.  So whether you’re searching for something to read on the train or plane, a late-night snuggling session in bed, or just a break from life’s day-to-day stressors, this list of short story collections is sure to help any reader find the perfect companion for their next journey into literature.  Keep reading to discover some of the best short story books published in 2023!

The Best Short Story Collections 2023

1. Relations by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
2. The Faraway World by Patricia Engel
3. When Trying to Return Home by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
4. Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng
5. Welcome Me to the Kingdom by Mai Nardone
6. Evil Flowers by Gunnhild Øyehaug, Translated by Kari Dickson
7. A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness by Jai Chakrabarti
8. A Manual for How to Love Us by Erin Slaughter
9. A Broken People’s Playlist by Chimeka Garricks
10. White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
11. The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Varela
12. Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny
13. I Am My Country by Kenan Orhan
14. People Who Talk to Stuffed Animals Are Nice by Ao Omae, Translated by Emily Balistrieri 
15. Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica, Translated by Sarah Moses
16. The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay
17. After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
18. The Best Possible Experience by Nishanth Injam
19. Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang
20. Holler, Child by LaToya Watkins
21. Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li
22. The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon
23. Jewel Box by E. Lily Yu
24. The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy

Relations by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Fresh and electrifying—stories, poems, and essays by African and diaspora writers, edited by author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond.

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The Faraway World by Patricia Engel

A collection of ten haunting, award-winning short stories set across the Americas and linked by themes of migration, sacrifice, and moral compromise.

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When Trying to Return Home by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

A dazzling debut collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond–and an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms.

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Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng

Richly drawn stories about the lives of ordinary families in contemporary Botswana as they navigate relationships, tradition and caretaking in a rapidly changing world.

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Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng

Richly drawn stories about the lives of ordinary families in contemporary Botswana as they navigate relationships, tradition and caretaking in a rapidly changing world.

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Welcome Me to the Kingdom by Mai Nardone

An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth-century Bangkok tell the story of three families striving to control their own destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.

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Evil Flowers by Gunnhild Øyehaug, Translated by Kari Dickson

A collection of playfully surreal stories about love, death, and metamorphosis.

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A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness by Jai Chakrabarti

In the fourteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today across borders, religions, and race.

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A Manual for How to Love Us by Erin Slaughter

A debut, interlinked collection of stories exploring the primal nature of women’s grief—offering insight into the profound experience of loss and the absurd ways in which we seek control in an unruly world.

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A Broken People’s Playlist by Chimeka Garricks

A fresh, crackling, interlinked collection of short fiction set among the denizens of Nigeria’s Port Harcourt and inspired by a playlist of beloved pop songs.

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White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world. Featuring illustrations by award-winning artist Shaun Tan.

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The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Varela

A collection of humorous, sexy, and highly neurotic tales about parenting, long-term relationships, systemic and interpersonal racism, and class conflict from the author of The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stressdeftly and poignantly expresses the frustration of knowing the problems and solutions to our society’s inequities but being unable to do anything about them.

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Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny

The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us glittering stories of love—friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts—in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime.

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I Am My Country by Kenan Orhan

A debut collection that explores the lives of ordinary people in Turkey to reveal how even individual acts of resistance have extraordinary repercussions.

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People Who Talk to Stuffed Animals Are Nice by Ao Omae, Translated by Emily Balistrieri

A fresh, thoughtful, and always surprising short story collection explores gender, friendship, romance, love, human interaction and its absence, and how a misogynistic society limits women and men.

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Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica, Translated by Sarah Moses

This is a collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories that explores our deepest fears and most disturbing fantasies.

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The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay

The fifteen pieces in this brilliant collection, The Beast You Are, are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart.

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After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

A masterful collection of stories that plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tides and hidden undercurrents of ordinary relationships.

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The Best Possible Experience by Nishanth Injam

An emotionally rich collection of short stories, painting a fascinating portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora and a yearning rendering of the people and places we call home.

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Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang

A playful and deeply affective short story collection about the histories, technologies, and generational divides that shape our relationships.

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Holler, Child by LaToya Watkins

A collection of stories that portrays West Texas characters facing loss, disappointment, and betrayal, with stories that explore the power and resilience of women.

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Holler, Child is also one of the books in The 2023 Fall Reading Guide.

Jewel Box by E. Lily Yu

The strange, the sublime, and the monstrous confront one another with astonishing consequences in this collection of twenty-two stories from award-winning writer E. Lily Yu.

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The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon

From the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.

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Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li

A collection of stories that explores themes of grief, loss, survival, and the desire to live a purposeful life as each of the characters reflects on their lives.

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Wednesday’s Child is also one of the books in The 2023 Fall Reading Guide.

The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy

In this collection of dark stories, women’s lives are etched by poverty–material, emotional, sexual–but also splashed by beauty, sometimes even joy, as they search for the good in the cards they’ve been dealt.

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What do you think about this best short story collections 2023 book list?

Have you read any story collections from this list?  What are your favorite short story collections of 2023?  What story collections would you add to the list?  Let’s talk all about it in the comments.