New Best American Mystery Series Editor at HMH

Author, critic, and editor Steph Cha has been tapped as the new series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories, which will be reframed as The Best American Mystery & Suspense, under Cha’s direction, starting with the fall 2021 edition.

Cha is the author of the Juniper Song mystery series and Your House Will Pay, which won both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the California Book Award, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she edited the noir section for almost five years. She succeeds Otto Penzler, who edited the annual anthology for over 23 years, and will work with a different guest editor each year to feature the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction published in North America. 

The Best American Mystery & Suspense will also become part of HMH’s Best American collections, which include annual volumes of short stories, food writing, essays, travel writing, science and nature writing, and science fiction and fantasy writing. Submissions for The Best American Mystery & Suspense can be sent to bestamericanmysterysuspense@gmail.com. Eligible stories for the 2021 edition must have must have been first published in the calendar year 2020 in an American or Canadian publication.