The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, was judged and edited by Lauren Goff, who says that when selecting the twenty winning stories in the introduction that each of the stories selected had to pass rigorous tests, “the first and most important of which was that they had to show some sort of thrill or risk in terms of language or structure or plot or enigma…” All but a handful of the stories are surreal, fabulist, or magical realist. Short story writers take note.