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“I’m astounded and inspired by the quality and variety of the nominations we’ve received for this anthology, and I can’t wait to share these remarkable stories with the reading public who have waited so long for the revival of this iconic annual collection.”—Robin Miura, editor of New Stories from the South
A revival of the iconic anthology of best Southern short stories featuring eminent and emerging voices.
This anthology revives the iconic annual story collection, New Stories from the South, gathering outstanding short stories written by Southern writers or about the Southern U.S. Stories were nominated by editors of literary journals and magazines, publishers of short story collections, and by prominent Southern writers who served as contributing editors for this volume.
The 2026 edition contains an exciting lineup of well-known Southern writers such as Ron Rash, Deesha Philyaw, and Tony Earley, as well as talented newcomers such as Exodus Oktavia Brownlow and A. J. Bermudez.
This year’s volume has an introduction by Appalachian writer Silas House, New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, and the poetry collection All These Ghosts (Blair, 2025) and is edited by Blair’s Editorial Director, Robin Miura, who assumes this mantle from Shannon Ravenel, the Algonquin editor who launched the series and edited the volumes through 2006.
Robin Miura is Editorial Director at Blair. She has worked in publishing for more than 25 years, first as a production editor for Oxford University Press and then as a freelance editor, proofreader, publishing consultant, and writing coach for publishing companies and individual authors. Robin’s freelance clients have included Algonquin Books, Oxford University Press, Duke University Press, and University of North Carolina Press. She is also a founding editor of the online magazine South Writ Large (www.southwritlarge.com). She lives in Clayton, North Carolina.
Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels: Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo, Eli the Good, Same Sun Here, Southernmost, and Lark Ascending. He most recently published a poetry collection with Blair, All These Ghosts (2025). He is a recipient of the 2023 Southern Book Prize, the 2023 Booklist Editors' Choice, two Nautilus Book Awards, the Duggins Prize (the largest award for LGBTQ writers in the nation), and many other honors, including being longlisted for the 2019 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. In 2023 he became Poet Laureate of Kentucky and was a Grammy finalist for writing and producing the first country music video to feature a gay love story. In 2022 he served as a fiction judge for the National Book Awards. His writing has appeared recently in Time, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and many other leading publications. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
