Here are the new covers and guest editors for the 2026 Best American Series.
For decades, Mariner Books has stewarded The The Best American Series®, a literary institution that began in 1915 with Best American Short Stories, to your bookshelves. But just in case you’re stumbling upon it for the first time: Each book in the annual series showcases the best short fiction and nonfiction in a given year (in this case, 2025) in its particular category: short stories, essays, mystery and suspense, science and nature writing, science fiction and fantasy, or food and travel writing. Each volume’s series editor selects notable work from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, and a special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then makes the final selection for the anthology.
This year’s anthologies will be published on October 20; each volume features cover art by Dutch abstract artist Wouter Tjeenk Willink. Here are those covers, along with information about the editors for each anthology:
The Best American Short Stories® 2026
Guest editor: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Series editor: Nicole A. Lamy
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and many other awards. His other books include a sequel, The Committed, and the bestselling short story collection The Refugees. Other works are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial, as well as the children’s books Chicken of the Sea and Simone. His last book was To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other.
Nicole A. Lamy was Book editor of the Boston Globe, where she expanded books coverage, including a reader advice column called Match Book, which she subsequently wrote for the New York Times Book Review. In addition to book reviews and features she has written about food, photography, and parenting among other topics for the Globe, the Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, and the American Scholar.
The Best American Essays® 2026
Guest editor: M. Gessen
Series editor: Kim Dana Kupperman
M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award–winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russiaand The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. An Opinion columnist for The New York Times, Gessen is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing, as well as Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships. Gessen teaches at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and lives in New York City.
Kim Dana Kupperman is the author of the award-winning essay collection I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence; a memoir, The Last of Her; and a historical novel, Six Thousand Miles to Home. She is the editor of You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person and the founding editor of Welcome Table Press, whose mission is to publish and celebrate the essay, in all its forms.
The Best American Mystery and Suspense™ 2026
Guest editor: Megan Abbott
Series editor: Steph Cha
Megan Abbott is the award-winning author of twelve crime novels, including You Will Know Me, Beware the Woman and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is also a screenwriter and the co-creator Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. She is currently adapting her latest novel, the national bestseller El Dorado Drive, for television for A24.
Steph Cha is the author of the Juniper Song mystery series and Your House Will Pay, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the California Book Award for Fiction. She is an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she edited the noir section. She’s spent the last several years working in television, and is the co-creator of Butterfly, forthcoming on Amazon Prime. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing™ 2026
Guest editor: Randall Munroe
Series editor: Jaime Green
Randall Munroe is the author of the webcomic xkcd and the New York Times bestsellers What If?, What If? 2, Thing Explainer, and How To. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after him; that asteroid, 4942 Munroe, is large enough that it could cause a mass extinction if it were to hit Earth. He lives in Massachusetts.
Jaime Green is a science writer and essayist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Aeon, Slate, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Astrobites, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, and is currently working on her next book, At Home in the Stars, scheduled for 2029.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy™ 2026
Guest editor: Olivie Blake
Series editor: John Joseph Adams
Olivie Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of speculative fiction for adults, including The Atlas Six trilogy, Alone with You in the Ether, Masters of Death, the short story collection Januaries, and her most recent novel, Dreamland. With Little Chmura, she is the co-creator of the graphic series Clara and the Devil. As Alexene Farol Follmuth, she is also the author of the young adult novels My Mechanical Romance and Twelfth Knight. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.
John Joseph Adams is the editor of the Hugo Award–winning Lightspeed, and of more than forty anthologies, including Wastelands, The Living Dead, and the New York Times bestseller Out There Screaming (co-edited with Jordan Peele).
The Best American Food and Travel Writing™ 2026
Guest editor: José Andrés
Series editor: Jaya Saxena
José Andrés is a Michelin-starred chef, an Emmy Award–winning TV host and producer, and the New York Times bestselling author of Spain My Way, Change the Recipe, Zaytinya, Vegetables Unleashed, and The World Central Kitchen Cookbook. A pioneer of Spanish tapas in America and a celebrated ambassador of Spanish cooking, he leads the renowned José Andrés Group, which operates more than forty restaurants across the United States and beyond. Andrés is the founder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen and has been honored as Outstanding Chef and Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation. He has twice been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and has been awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and one of Spain’s highest honors, the Princess of Asturias Foundation’s Concordia Prize.
Jaya Saxena is a co-founder of Ravenous, a worker-owned food and culture publication. She has also been published at Eater, Defector, Slate, GQ, Gourmet, TASTE and more. She lives in Queens, NY.
