Performance

The Best American Short Stories 2026

1 upcoming performance in New York

At Symphony Space, *The Best American Short Stories 2026* is presented as a live reading event shaped for a New York audience, drawing on the city’s long habit of treating literature as performance. Featured performers include Ani DiFranco, Tony Trischka, Abby Jimenez, Annabelle Gurwitch, and Caro Claire Burke. The program frames contemporary short fiction as a record of how Americans describe work, intimacy, conflict, and belief right now. One clear takeaway is how well the short story holds up onstage, where voice and pacing become the argument.