‘The best short fiction writers place their pens down and leave you with a haunting: a deep shifting of self, precipitated by impossibly few words.’ —Maxine Beneba Clarke

In The Best Australian Stories 2017, Maxine Beneba Clarke – author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Hate Race and award-winning short story collection Foreign Soil – selects the most remarkable short fiction of the past year.

A woman sails to unfamiliar shores to start her life with a stranger. A boy goes to school one day and returns home twenty years older. The government erects a wall across the country and right down the middle of a marital bed.

Diverse in style and voice, these exceptional stories have been chosen by Clarke because they ‘push and pull at our hearts, demanding entry into their chambers’.

Contributors include Dominic Amerena, Madeline Bailey, Tony Birch, Verity Borthwick, Raelee Chapman, Elizabeth Tien An Flux, Cassie Hamer, John Kinsella, Julie Koh, Melissa Lucashenko, Myfanwy McDonald, Jennifer Mills, Joshua Mostafa, Ryan O'Neill, David Oberg, Allee Richards, Mirandi Riwoe, Josephine Rowe, Joe Rubbo, Beejay Silcox and Ellen van Neerven.