The O. Henry Prizes: Read Six Of the Year’s Best Stories

Ottessa Moshfegh: “Clark was the one to introduce me to the submarine-sandwich diet and to the zombies at the bus depot.”

Asako Serizawa: “I believe few of us forget what we keep hidden in our memory’s hollows.”

Rebecca Evanhoe: “They’d all been having anxious dreams, every one of them, even though life had been treating them well.”

Robert Coover: “I told him to be careful, because people had a way of disappearing around Marleen.”

Geetha Iyer: “On the anniversary of my father’s death, I wrote to old Chappalwala, begging him to return to Chiang Rai for more river ducks.”

Adrienne Celt: “She wants to spend the whole day like this, vibrating with the light of God.”