Best Canadian Stories 2026 edited by Zsuzsi Gartner

Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann

Choosing the best Canadian stories in any given year is a daunting task: “hidden as they were amidst the forests of sameness and swamplands of meh,” as editor Zsuzsi Gartner so aptly puts it in her introduction. As if sifting for gold in a muddy stream, Gartner has culled through the pages of literary journals large and small to end up with a collection of fifteen gleaming nuggets.

The first story, “We are Busy Being Alive” by Rishi Midha is a glimpse into the undefinable anxieties of suburban survival during a heatwave. A young woman makes stitches on her leg before heading to work at a smoothie stand in an unairconditioned mall. Her parents assure themselves she is fine. Her younger brother acts out his age in continuous disruptions.

The next story, a three-pager by Sophie Crocker, leaves the present for a future where soldiers are drafted by their astrological signs, in this case young, inexperienced Geminis, to fight in a pointless war on a distant moon.

Back on earth, the rest of the stories don’t limit themselves to form or place. “Wo” is the memories of a motherless childhood in Ceylon (pre-Sri Lanka) by an elderly Toronto man. “Tasmanian Shores” consists of the journals of a man trapped on a mountain in Tasmania. “Sounding a Name” is a man’s recollection of a woman who falls from the balcony of a theatre in Moscow. “Sand Penis” tells of a class outing to the beach, where things get a bit complicated. “A Language of Shrugs and Sparks” is a window into the complicated personal lives of computer codebreakers. “The Light Never Shuts Up” details a pilgrimage (of sorts) of a Slovakian veteran of World War I as he tries to find sanctuary in Mexico.

“Containment” and “One Way Out” are structured in decidedly atypical ways, the first being a “coming-of-age story meets academic syllabus” according to Gartner, the second, a story that what might be called “interactive fiction,” is a stroll through Montreal that becomes a hike through that city’s history.

The range of subjects is broad. A few of the stories, especially “The Formula” touch on issues of gender and the complicated emotions that accompany one’s search for identity. A few others are structured in ways that are anything but straightforward, but nevertheless intriguing. A gay man trying to prove his manhood to himself (and to his followers on Instagram) by shooting a bull moose. An otherwise solitary man organizes a neighbourhood Christmas dinner with a surprising main course. The struggles of a flower-obsessed immigrant woman with her boyfriend.

The sole translation, a story by Montreal writer Julie Bouchard, “What Burns,” compares a deadly fire in a residential building in Old Montreal with the raging forest fires in the Canadian far north.

There is no overarching theme that unites these stories. What they all share is a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) complexity of message. None of the stories is totally straightforward. Beneath each percolates far more than is immediately evident on the surface.

Taken together, these stories illuminate the wonderful diversity of Canadian writing from writers young and old, who refuse to be bound by stifling convention.

Best Canadian Stories 2026 is published by Biblioasis.