This year’s Best American Short Stories is edited by the critically acclaimed and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver, whose latest book is Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver’s selections for The Best American Short Stories 2001 showcase a wide variety of new voices and masters, such as Alice Munro, Rick Moody, Dorothy West, and John Updike. Reading these stories was both a distraction from and an anchor to the complexities of my life – my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation. I hope they will be yours. – Barbara Kingsolver