Carolyn Ferrell

"Dear Miss Metropolitan tells the fragmented story of Fern, Gwinnie, and Jesenia, three girls abducted by a monster who calls himself Boss Man and held captive in a decaying house in Queens for a decade. Inspired by real events, the tale is inventively revealed by multiple narrators before, during and after their ordeal. Documents, newspapers, excerpts from books, photographs, interviews, and other forms of media piece together the larger story. By...

""To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time," recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. "They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships." Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced...