Laugh, Cry, Repeat: Very Cool Short Fiction
Coolest American Stories 2025
In the 2008 edition of The Best American Short Stories, edited by Salman Rushdie (and then-series editor Heidi Pitlor, who writes
here on Substack), you’ll find a great story by Mark Wisniewski, “Straightaway,” which is one of my favorites in that year’s collection.Along with publishing several novels and a short story collection, including Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman—a great title if ever there was one, Mark has won a coveted Pushcart Prize and has published more than 125 short stories in distinguished periodicals including The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and TriQuarterly. His most recent novel is a true page-turner, a thriller set in the world of New York publishing, Necessary Deeds.
Under the name Mark Wish, he and his co-founding editor Elizabeth Coffey, began publishing the literary anthology Coolest American Stories in 2022.
I finished reading the 2025 edition earlier today and loved this eclectic collection. CAS 2025’s thirteen stories feature a range of styles and much antic authorial imagination. You’ll find noir alongside comedy and satire, spy stories in the vein of Le Carré, Coen Brothers-esque crime. Some stories are very funny, others quietly devastating.
I hope you’ll pick up a copy and ask your local library to order one too. Below I’m sharing the first line, in order of appearance in CAS, of each story Coffey and Wish selected for this year’s anthology.
“It’s Just Whatever,” Timothy Laurence Marsh: “In the early years, seldom had Mrs. Parker worried about Robbie.”
“Good Shoes,” Twist Phelan: “By the time we’re in the air, things between me and Stevie have pretty much hit bottom.”
“Animal Control,” Kathleen Furin: “I realized immediately that I’d made a wrong turn.”
“Hearts,” Mathieu Cailler: “Dear Mr. Landy Henderson, I hope you don’t mind me writing to you.”
“The Source,” Demond J. Blake: “It’s Sunday afternoon and Ana, me, Benny, and Jai are sitting around Benny’s porch drinking talls not saying much.”
“Jump Seat,” Linda Bernal: “Lorraine tells me she was once hit in the heart by lightning and pronounced dead.”
“Dachas,” Philip Cesario: “David Carrington glanced to either side as he left the hotel, minutes after Katya Sokolov walked out through the same mahogany doors and headed in the direction of Central London.”
“Punchline,” Mehdi M. Kashani: “When Mori gets wind of the first allegation, he immediately thinks of his mother.”
“The Instinct to Flee,” Brian Patrick Heston: “When I got home from work that day, Cind was at the kitchen table with the checkbook and her laptop.”
“The Place,” Beatrice Turner: “Looming on the cliff, Rockridge was a vision, tall and bulky.”
“Mass,” Ed McManis, “Bill strutted in, smiling as if modeling his suit.”
“Sin on Wheels,” Lee Martin: “The first time Jane saw Sonny Cooper, it was mid-July 1956, the heart of summer.”
“You Know, You Can Die From That,” Francine Witte: “This is how Merton finishes his lecture to me as he watches me eat an ice cream cone over the sink in the break room: ‘And Jen? I’m talking real death.’”
Mark Wish was recently on Ithaca, New York’s WVBR where he discussed his formative years in Milwaukee, his writing, and Coolest American Stories. You can listen to his interview here. Information about CAS’s next submission period and more details about the anthology can be found here.
Purchase CAS 2025 here, CAS 2024, CAS 2023, and CAS 2022.
Mark Wish's short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Georgia Review,The Gettysburg Review, Fiction, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Barrelhouse, The Yale Review, The Sun and numerous other publications. He has received distinctions such as the Tobias Wolff Award, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Mark served as the fiction editor of California Quarterly, was the founding fiction editor of New York Stories, and has served as a contributing editor for The Pushcart Prize anthology.
As a freelance editor, Mark has helped many writers land numerous book deals and publish in dozens of venues including The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, and Best American Short Stories. His many books include the novels Watch Me Go (Putnam) and Necessary Deeds (Regal House Publishing).
Elizabeth Coffey is an award-winning design director at Random House, where she's designed book interiors for Barack Obama's A Promised Land, Michelle Obama's Becoming, Glennon Doyle's Untamed, and numerous other bestselling titles. She dabbled in poetry in the nineties and has published in several small magazines. She is working on her first novel, a mystery about estranged sisters, and uses the pen name Elizabeth Coffey as a tribute to her great-grandmother Johanna Coffey. Elizabeth has been Mark's go-to editor for virtually all of his published short stories and Watch Me Go.
Ray (pictured above) is simply the best office assistant ever.
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CODA: A big congratulations to two alumni of the MFA program at Northwestern in the School of Professional Studies where I’m faculty director,
and Alex Higley, and to one current student, Nicole Schnitzler. They each published a new book this past Tuesday, February 25!Allison’s is FAGIN THE THIEF (novel, Doubleday), Alex’s is TRUE FAILURE (novel, Coffee House Press), and Nicole’s is CHICAGO COCKTAILS: An Elegant Collection of Over 100 Recipes Inspired by the Windy City (Cider Mill Press). Bravo!!
Another great post, Christine! Thanks for pointing out the "Coolest Stories" anthology. Gotta get it.