“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book

Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.

Featuring:

Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book

Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.

Featuring:

Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book

Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.

Featuring:

Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

Praise for Best Canadian Stories

“One of the best things about the end of the year is having a chance to look back. The three Best Canadian volumes . . . are a snapshot of some of the finest in Canadian writing this year.”

—Robert J. Wiersema, Toronto Star

“The legacy for Canadian literature in the Best Canadian Stories series can’t be overstated. For years the collection has been the place to discover Canadian writers.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

“Best Canadian Stories . . . combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”

—Open Book

"The collection gathers a world of beautiful and provocative literature, each unique in writing yet united by shared thematic currents . . . As an art form, the short story collection uniquely allows readers to sample many authors while creating a discourse between each tale."

—Alexandra Lasser, The Tribune

“Each of the sixteen stories carries a distinctive voice . . . Biblioasis’s Best just keeps getting better.”

—Michael Greenstein, The Miramichi Reader

"Smart, painful, brilliant short stories. I’ve read other volumes in this series in years past, and while I’ve enjoyed them, this was a particularly good year. These stories span so much, and have so much depth to them—you should start reading them now, and treat yourself to a masterclass in new short fiction."

—Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader

"I was happy to read the stories, enjoyed their authors’ multifarious understanding of the malleable genre, and intrigued by what stories they chose to tell and how."

—Brett Josef Grubisic, The BC Review

“The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”

—Quill & Quire

Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the Giller Prize finalist Better Living through Plastic Explosives and of the widely acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth. Her first novel, The Beguiling, was a finalist for the 2020 Writers Trust Fiction Prize and a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her fiction has been widely anthologized, read on the CBC and NPR and won National Magazine Awards. She was the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow for Cork, Ireland in 2016. She edited the award-winning fiction anthology Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow and was the founder and director of Writers Adventure Camp in Whistler, BC. She is currently completing her third short fiction collection. She lives in Vancouver.

Praise for Best Canadian Stories

“One of the best things about the end of the year is having a chance to look back. The three Best Canadian volumes . . . are a snapshot of some of the finest in Canadian writing this year.”

—Robert J. Wiersema, Toronto Star

“The legacy for Canadian literature in the Best Canadian Stories series can’t be overstated. For years the collection has been the place to discover Canadian writers.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

“Best Canadian Stories . . . combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”

—Open Book

"The collection gathers a world of beautiful and provocative literature, each unique in writing yet united by shared thematic currents . . . As an art form, the short story collection uniquely allows readers to sample many authors while creating a discourse between each tale."

—Alexandra Lasser, The Tribune

“Each of the sixteen stories carries a distinctive voice . . . Biblioasis’s Best just keeps getting better.”

—Michael Greenstein, The Miramichi Reader

"Smart, painful, brilliant short stories. I’ve read other volumes in this series in years past, and while I’ve enjoyed them, this was a particularly good year. These stories span so much, and have so much depth to them—you should start reading them now, and treat yourself to a masterclass in new short fiction."

—Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader

"I was happy to read the stories, enjoyed their authors’ multifarious understanding of the malleable genre, and intrigued by what stories they chose to tell and how."

—Brett Josef Grubisic, The BC Review

“The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”

—Quill & Quire

Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the Giller Prize finalist Better Living through Plastic Explosives and of the widely acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth. Her first novel, The Beguiling, was a finalist for the 2020 Writers Trust Fiction Prize and a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her fiction has been widely anthologized, read on the CBC and NPR and won National Magazine Awards. She was the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow for Cork, Ireland in 2016. She edited the award-winning fiction anthology Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow and was the founder and director of Writers Adventure Camp in Whistler, BC. She is currently completing her third short fiction collection. She lives in Vancouver.

“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book

Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.

Featuring:

Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman