Recommended Reading: 22 Short Story Collections for Short Story Month
You may or may not know that May is Short Story Month, so to celebrate the occasion we put together some of our favorite new and forthcoming short story collections. Perhaps you’re reaching for short fiction lately because your attention span has become as short as mine 😅, or maybe you just love damn good literature! Either way, these books should whet your appetite!
Cheers to good reads and good frosé all summer long!
Serena
Cars on Fire by Mónica Ramón Ríos
Mónica Ramón Ríos's English-language debut story collection is an amazing series of female characters. A speechwriter is employed writing for would-be dictators, but plays in a rock band as a means of protest. A failed Marxist cuts off her own head as a final poetic act. Set in New York City, New Jersey, and Chile's La Zona Central, these stories offer remembrances to those lost to violence and subvert the oppressive forces like xenophobia and neoliberalism within the academic world. –Nick
Inheritors by Asako Serizawa
This is such an impressive, inventive, and intelligent debut. Spanning from 1911 to 2035, these deftly linked, nonlinear stories attempt to articulate the myriad of ways that memories, histories, and legacies of war are inherited. In particular, we’re looking at WWII relations between Japan and Korea and the U.S., confronting questions of colonial culpability and complicity through the intergenerational experiences of, primarily, one family. Serizawa’s questioning around the nature of survival and sacrifice yield mind-expanding, challenging, and profound results. –Serena
Sarahland by Sam Cohen
A Sarah by any other name… In these unapologetically queer stories, a Sarah each with a story as different from the last, struggles to find identity outside of their name. These stories are brash, hilarious, and surreal—with a slew of content warnings not for the faint of heart. –Anthony
Eat the Mouth that Feeds You by Carribean Fragoza
This debut collection of short gothic fiction centers around Latinx women characters dealing with themes of motherhood, desire, violence, family curses and more. Surreal, unsettling, and soulful, this one promises to leave marks in all those who read it. As someone who loves a healthy mix of tenderness, fabulism, and brutality in my short stories—and who adored Sabrina & Corina—this was one of my most anticipated books of 2021 and it did not disappoint! –Serena
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
If you read this you get to feast on delicious sentences like this one: “I sat among them, enraptured by their stories, realizing for the first time that every one of us was a link stretching back, mother to daughter to mother, in an unbroken chain from the center of time, connected by milk and blood.” This also, coincidentally, describes the experience of reading this collection which is about—on its surface—longing, about want, but also—at its core—about having, and the ways in which these characters must, and can, awaken to what is already inside them. This book is a trove of sticky, sharp, and luminous treasures! –Serena
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
A bit about me: Sula is my favorite Toni Morrison novel. I love Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, and her Lucy. I loved Janie Crawford, from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Esch from Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones. I have Helen Ellis’ American Housewife on my TBR. If some, or all, of these things are true for you too, then you, like me, might also feel that Deesha Philyaw is a writer you’ve been waiting for. The women and girls that populate this collection are complex and imperfect, but indelible. Their stories will move you, make you laugh, make you sigh. Philyaw’s voice is striking, memorable, her style: fresh and inventive. A truly remarkable book—and it’s a super quick read, so give it a go and thank me later! –Serena
Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen
Sliding between realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism across the Chinese diaspora, these stories work together to weave a portrait of modern China that is sharp and brilliant with social insight. With a background in journalism, Chen’s fiction is vivid and inspired. A true delight. –Colleen
I’m Waiting For You by Kim Bo-Young
Translated, here, for the first time in English, are the probing and existential stories of one of South Korea’s most influential sci-fi writers. Written in pairs of thematically interconnected stories, two of the stories follow an engaged couple separated in space, desperately hoping to reunite in time for their wedding ceremony on Earth. The other two offer a glimpse into the realm of gods; when one god’s “child” rebels against the original order of existence, that very order is put into question. I can’t stop thinking about this book! –Serena
The Rock Eaters by Brenda Paynado
From Dominican-American author Brenda Peynado come 16 piercing and spellbinding stories rich with lush imagery and fluid language. Blending elements of magical-realism, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, this collection mines the pain of an unjust, colonized and capitalist world. Both heartbreaking and haunting. –Colleen
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
Some days all you want to read about is alienation, the bleakness of modern times, and general despair, and for those days we have Terminal Boredom. In the sci-fi-inflected worlds of these stories, Izumi Suzuki explores sexual politics, technological futures, and the psychic toll of living in modern times with alarming emotional precision. This was one of my most anticipated spring releases, and it didn’t disappoint: prepare to be disturbed and dazzled. –Nika
Alien Stories by E.C. Osondu
From Nigerian author, E.C. Osondu, comes this prize-winning collection about otherness and belonging. Employing a dexterous blend of sci-fi tropes, realism, and satire, this multidimensional collection investigates what it means to be “alien,” as it pertains both to immigration and otherworldly affairs. –Serena
Forthcoming:
Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti (June 1)
These dark, short stories are absolutely gripping. Nkweti is a master at wielding tension on the page and I had to take day long breaks between each fantastic story so I could wipe off some perspiration and let the gorgeous narration sink in before diving into the next one. –Shulokhana
We Two Alone by Jack Wang (June 1)
This fantastic debut collection that spans five continents and the past 100 years, delivers intimate and wildly diverse experiences from the Chinese diaspora. Often facing loss and the sacrifices that come with immigration and resistance against gender, race, and class divisions, Wang’s characters embody a collective strength in a deeply moving way. –Colleen
Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor (June 22)
Did you read and love Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life? Of course you did! Were you lucky enough to be in the room when Brandon came to Books Are Magic before lockdown? I hope so! Brandon’s prose is dazzling in all ways, and I am beyond excited to read these stories! –Emma
Variations on the Body by María Ospina (July 6)
Set in the aughts in Bogotá, these stories orbit several Colombian women, and one girl, who are all connected, by locale, yes, but also by their common, often inexplicable, impulses and appetites. One woman is a reformed Marxist guerilla, attempting to approximate some sense of normalcy through drugstore beauty products. Another is a voyeuristic novelist who has developed a fixation on the girls of her neighborhood convent. They each are desperate to be seen, and yet deeply fearful of it. This book offers an alluring union between rawness and refinement. –Serena
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So (August 3)
In these interconnected stories So perfectly blends humor and trauma focusing on identity, sexuality, race, and class through the lives of the Cambodian-American children of refugees. This will be a bittersweet release as the book is being published posthumously, we will not get to see what more he could have brought to the world. –Anthony
Songs for the Flames by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (August 3)
From the well-decorated, internationally beloved author Juan Gabriel Vasquez comes this new collection full of complex and unforgettable characters having a suite of unexpected encounters. Having already been published in Spanish and received with wide acclaim, these nine stories are sure to leave as big a splash for English readers as well—I eagerly await the cascade! –Serena
American Estrangement by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (August 10)
By turns haunting, humorous, biting, and emotionally expressive, the stories of American Estrangement revolve around characters enmeshed in deeply personal crises: a mother’s imminent death, addiction, the end of a relationship. Sayrafiezadeh is a perceptive observer of the shifting emotional cadences of a given moment, deftly revealing the ways in which his characters’ histories and perceptions collide with their present. A moving and illuminating collection to return to again and again. –Nika
The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (August 17)
Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel, We Cast A Shadow, was a funny and often horrifying satire about race in America, and that book alone would make me excited for this, Ruffin’s first story collection, but also, consider the following: Ruffin is so beloved at his local coffee shop that they put up a plaque that says he wrote his novel there, and Ruffin’s Twitter feed, which is so warm and enthusiastic about the process of writing that it actually makes me want to get more work done. A great writer and a great person! Sign me up. –Emma
Today A Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer (August 31)
If every work of fiction is inherently a byproduct of the time in which it was written, and bears the mark of the DNA of its author at that moment in time, this book of short stories written between 1966 and 2020 is a fascinating time capsule of womanhood, marriage, and motherhood over the last century. Wolitzer is 91, and the mother of Meg Wolitzer, one of my very favorite novelists, and so it was an extra delight to read this book and see how much alike the two writers are--I see her mother especially in Meg’s humor, so if you’ve enjoyed any of Meg’s books, do take a crack at this. The final story, written in 2020, is a heartbreaker, but I loved reading it following the rest of the book, and watching this family (many of the characters repeat) age and evolve, even through the very worst moments of life. May all writers we love live to 91 and keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. A fabulous book. –Emma
How To Wrestle A Girl by Venita Blackburn (September 7)
In these bite sized stories Blackburn crafts a visceral picture of girlhood and is able to reimagine how it is to tell a story—all with humor, honesty, and beauty. –Anthony
The Dog of Tithwal by Saadat Hasan Manto (September 14)
These stories vibrate with energy, challenging social boundaries and accepted truths with a sharp humor that can only come from a writer who cares deeply about his subject. Saadat Hasan Manto’s ability to convey the absurdity of moments of violence, political and otherwise, without casting judgement on his characters or becoming didactic is a testament to his skill with the form. If you enjoy the bustle of city life or miss hearing snippets of conversation on the sidewalks, The Dog of Tithwal is for you. –Nika
