Short Stories: Beginnings and Endings
These five short stories are about new beginnings and unsettling endings that aren’t really endings.
short stories
Short Story Author Larry Brown’s Big Love for His Small Characters
Although his works evoke Charles Bukowski, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner, Larry Brown's unapologetic characters were always his own.
‘The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories’
Jhumpa Lahiri's picks for The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories may betray her sympathies. She has no problem with this.
‘The Sea Cloak and Other Stories’ and the Everyday Life of Gaza’s Embattled Residents
In The Sea Cloak and Other Stories, Nayrouz Qarmout's deft, descriptive prose offers beautiful vignettes of Palestinians struggling to build lives and hope.
Short Stories: Siblings
Whatever the plot lines of a work of fiction, if it features siblings as important characters, various rich themes are mined. This issue of Short Stories brings forth the sibling-inspired works of Martha Bátiz, K Anis Ahmed, Jenny Zhang, Lidudumalingani, and Kseniya Melnik.
On Chuck Klosterman’s Latest in Junk-Food Intellectualism, ‘Raised In Captivity’
The best stories in Chuck Klosterman's Raised in Captivity are the ones that most closely resemble his thinly-veiled essays.
Short Stories: Tales of Love in Later Life
In the works of Elizabeth Taylor, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucia Berlin, Amy Bloom, and Yiyun Li, we meet older women protagonists who find potential later-life loves in all kinds of interesting ways.
Ted Chiang’s ‘Exhalation’ Calmly Stares Oblivion in the Face
With his second collection of short stories, Exhalation, master of existential science fiction Ted Chiang explores AI, time travel, and alternate realities with the studious eye of an anthropologist.
Short Stories: Journeys
The protagonists in these short stories by Asako Serizawa, Nanjil Nadan, Goli Taraghi, Stephen King, and John Cheever are unsettled, vulnerable, and unmoored during their journeys.
Speculation and Responsibility in ‘A People’s Future of the United States’
Speculative futures should go beyond merely reflecting the fears peddled by news and social media. Anthology A People's Future of the United States at times pushes those boundaries.
Short Stories: Animals, Part II
The selected stories this month have a touch or more of surrealism and their writers — Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Sarah Hall, Robert Olen Butler, Beth Goder, and Jackie Kay — explore the humanity of our species and our relationships with other living species.
‘The Story Prize: Fifteen Years of Great Short Fiction’
Shape, time, and beautiful vision from some of the best short story collections of the 21st century are collected in The Story Prize: Fifteen Years of Great Short Fiction.