short story
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Out on the Coast
When he was five, six, seven, and eight, Max spent most of the summer thinking about the whale, sitting in his room with the shades drawn remembering the first visit and looking forward to the second, just before the new…
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New Murakami Short Story
“Kino,” a new short story by Haruki Murakami, is available to read without the paywall over at the New Yorker.
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What’s in a Name
Over at Matter, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives us a new piece of short fiction: My father’s first child was a girl. He said she was a loud squalling baby who grasped his finger with surprising strength, and he knew it meant…
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Calling Freddy
Michael Chabon has a short story over on Tablet; in it, he negotiates the acquaintance of a boy and his crippled neighbor: There was no menace or queerness in his manner, none at all. Mischief, yes. And the illicit sharing…
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Attention Spans Fall, Short Fiction Rises
That is not to say that normal books will decline. Of course they won’t. There will always be a place for big, satisfying stories to burrow through. But it seems that the rise of short stories are partly caused by…
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The Greatest Short Story of All-Time
“Kipling,” says a psychiatrist friend of mine, “was always pretending to be something other than he actually was—which was a 10-year-old boy.” His work, the best of it, has a boy’s barbarism and a boy’s conservatism. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” succeeds so spectacularly…
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The Very Short Story
In the Atlantic, Lydia Davis deconstructs two drafts of an early short story, showing how even something as minimal as a sentence or a paragraph can have a narrative arc.
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This Week in Short Fiction
May is Short Story Month! In honor of StoryADay’s second annual celebration, Flavorwire writers offered their recommendations of five stories worth a read, from Calvino to O’Connor. On Monday, Gawker held a live-chat interview with Rivka Galchen about her new…
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Paying Attention to the Short Story
The Telegraph’s Sam Baker says that the short story is experiencing a resurgence, both in the United States and Great Britain, thanks to technology. Suddenly, after years out in the cold, the short story finds itself a perfect fit for…
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Insert Short Story Here
[Beginning in media res in mother’s house.] [Sufficiently dramatic exposition with an obvious, planted echo to the story’s climax.] Story in need of kindling? Take a gander at this short story template from McSweeney’s. Use it as a guide— —Ok.…
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Mark Twain Still Popular…In China!
Did you know that Mark Twain is one of the best known foreign writers in China? Neither did we. There is a well earned, and unabashed image of Mark Twain as the quintessential American author and for good reason. The…