Our Collection – The Short Story Project

USA

Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that...

The Goophered Grapevine

Charles W. Chesnutt

22 min

USA

We found old Julius very useful when we moved to our new residence. He had a thorough knowledge of the neighborhood, was familiar with the roads and the watercourses, knew the qualities of the various soils...

Mars Jeems’s Nightmare

Charles W. Chesnutt

25 min

USA

I When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet...

The Passing of Grandison

Charles W. Chesnutt

26 min

USA

“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery——” “What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island,'” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have...

The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell

32 min

USA

I. THE LAND OF RED APPLES. There were eight in our party of bronzed children who were going East with the missionaries. Among us were three young braves, two tall girls, and we three little ones,...

The School Days of an Indian Girl

Zitkala-Ša

24 min

USA

What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?—COMUS. It was a quiet and still afternoon when I strolled forth in the goodly city of Edina. The confusion and bustle in the streets were terrible. Men were...

A Predicament

Edgar Allan Poe

14 min

USA

When I was eighteen I wanted something to do. I had tried teaching for two years, and hated it; I had tried sewing, and could not earn my bread in that way, at the cost of...

How I Went Out to Service

Louisa May Alcott

23 min

USA

Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living, and there was not wife or...

The Brothers

Louisa May Alcott

33 min

USA

Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat–markets, past single–storied homes, until suddenly it stops against a wide green...

Of the Coming of John

W. E. B. Du Bois

23 min

USA

He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—...

The Comet

W. E. B. Du Bois

20 min

USA

“It is perfectly clear,” said my wife, pointing to the sign on the door. “It is perfectly absurd,” I answered and yet there it stood written: “Prof Johnson, Laboratory in Sociology. Hours 9 until 3.” We...

Princess Steel

W. E. B. Du Bois

19 min

USA

When the call came I remember that I turned from the tele- phone in a romantic flutter. Though I had spoken only once to the great surgeon, Roland Maradick, I felt on that December afternoon that...

The Shadowy Third

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

I had no sooner entered the house than I knew something was wrong. Though I had never been in so splendid a place before—it was one of those big houses just off Fifth Avenue—I had a...

The Past

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

Twilights were wonderful just after the war. They hung above New York like indigo wash, forming themselves from asphalt dust and sooty shadows under the cornices and limp gusts of air exhaled from closing windows, to...

A Millionaire’s Girl

Zelda Fitzgerald

18 min

USA

The summer of 1924 shriveled the trees in the Champs-Elysees to a misty blue till they swayed before your eyes as if they were about to go down under the gasoline fumes. Before July was out,...

A Couple Of Nuts

Zelda Fitzgerald

19 min

USA

Bitter things dried behind the eyes of Miss Ella like garlic on a string before an open fire. The acrid fumes of sweet memories had gradually reddened their rims until at times they shone like the...

Miss Ella

Zelda Fitzgerald

11 min

USA

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against...

Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway

5 min

USA

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came...

In Another Country

Ernest Hemingway

8 min

USA

The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. “What’s yours?” George asked them. “I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat,...

The Killers

Ernest Hemingway

11 min

USA

“Don’t tell me!” said old Mis’ Briggs, with a forbidding shake of the head; “no mother that was a mother would desert her own child for anything on earth!” “And leaving it a care on the...

The Unnatural Mother

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 min

USA

“There won’t be many more such good times as these for us,” said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; “we’ve got to go out into the...

Five Girls

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5 min

USA

A giant of a brown-skinned man sauntered up the one street of the Village and out into the palmetto thickets with a small pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm. “Looka theah, folkses!” cried Elijah Mosley,...

Spunk

Zora Neale Hurston

8 min

USA

It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a wash-woman, and...

Sweat

Zora Neale Hurston

18 min

USA

After Guadalupe Nettel’s “Fungus” With my big toe, I pressed down on the bloated bulb of seaweed until a burst of salt air and ocean water popped out of its membrane. Amalia refused to do the...

Fungus

Mia Carrillo

5 min

USA

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...

The Birthmark

Nathaniel Hawthorne

25 min

USA

When I’m feeling down, I go for nighttime swims with the aquarium turtles. I was hired as a security guard because people keep trying to steal our very expensive penguins. In my opinion, the sea turtles...

Aquarium’s Most Wanted

Sophie Hoss

0 min

USA

The nodes were like beetles, their black metal bodies shining between the attendant’s fingers. “Just a pinch, dear,” he said, leaning in and fixing the nodes to my temples, measuring symmetry with my eyes and his....

The Fig Leaf

Benjamin Shane Evans

6 min

USA

The kid—they call him Spud—sees it while walking the mile to where he catches the school bus every morning except Thursdays when his mom pulls a shift at the school cafeteria and drives him there at...

For the Love of Goat

Clif Travers

14 min

USA

Clemens hated doctors. When he came of age in the late ‘80s, they invariably made him feel worse—even the ones whose off-the-cuff diagnoses and hair-trigger antibiotic prescriptions made him, physically, better. They’d ugly-eye his hacking coughs...

Face

Douglas Silver

30 min

USA

8:44 am Tuesday greets me with pale golden light, singing the song of the morning, the song of opportunity. I rise from my bed without using the snooze button even once, ready to meet the promise...

Cuddlebug

Jenna-Marie Warnecke

25 min

USA

I went running and tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. I broke my fall with my hand but also smashed my iPhone, which wasn’t in a protective case because the one I had didn’t fit...

And Even Higher

Todd Pitock

8 min

USA

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said,...

Wants

Grace Paley

3 min

USA

The room blazed with color. It seemed that the gorgeous things which the women were wearing had for this once managed to subdue the strident tones of the inevitable black and white of the men’s costumes....

The Wrong Man

Nella Larsen

6 min

USA

Passing Robitussin, my girlfriend guides the Bronco across the beach with her knee driving the wheel. Driving through night. Through black. She passes it to me. I take it, take some, pass it back. She takes...

NIGHTDRIVING

Robert Warf

9 min

Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven

USA

The Shackleford house was haunted. In the skittering of leaves across its rotting porch, locals heard the whispered misery of ghosts. Footsteps creaked on stair boards and sobs filtered through walls. An Atlanta developer had planned...

Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven

Ron Rash

13 min

USA

It’s late, and I can’t sleep. I raise a window for some spring Palo Alto air, but it doesn’t help. In bed, eyes open, I hear whispers, which makes me think of the president, because we...

NIRVANA

Adam Johnson

30 min

USA

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...

The Green Door

O. Henry

10 min

USA

September 12, 1950. The survivors limp down the mountain to a 6×6 that drops them at the field service platoon behind the hills. Seven men remaining from forty, stunned and filthy as they line up for...

Services

Gordon Haber

8 min

USA

It was the 15th of the August of 1999, the morning before the wedding of Benjamin Kern and Maitreya Scheffer, ceremony and celebration to be hosted by the bride’s parents at their home in Bethel, Vermont,...

Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?

Julia May Jonas

31 min

USA

My Dearest Pearl, Your letter arrived last week, and of course, I read it many times like I do, then put it in the box with all your others, which you know I cherish. I will...

Crazy Over William

Rich Elliott

19 min

USA

At noon, the aftermath of lovemaking, I was still wandering around the apartment naked, makeup smeared beneath my eyes. I messaged Sarah: Come to meeting with me. Her reply: I don’t need that stupid shit. I’d...

Summer of Fun

Kirie Pedersen

18 min

USA

Eight or nine years ago – I think it was summer 2012 – I found myself browsing the shelves at a bookstore in Tehran. Outposts of the local bookstore chain Shahr-e Ketab glitter like branches of...

The Translator I Never Wanted to Be

Mariam Rahmani

13 min

USA

The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...

A Mighty Nice Man

Patricia Highsmith

8 min

USA

When I came back to Tucson for Christmas break, my mom was like, “You need to clean out your closet or you’re not going anywhere.” This was her way of being dumb about the fact that...

She’s not quite woman’s best friend

KILEY REID

10 min

USA

It’s still dark when the weeping erupts, so Mather knows it’s early. How early he isn’t sure, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep, so it doesn’t matter. He pulls the extra pillow over...

Rollingwood

Ben Marcus

30 min

USA

But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future. Stephen Hawking, “The Future...

10 to the 16 to 1

James Patrick Kelly

36 min

USA

“Let’s get the announcements out of the way,” said Ilka, the teacher, to her foreigners in Conversational English for Adults. “Tomorrow evening the institute is holding a symposium. Ahmed,” she asked the Turkish student with the...

Reverse Bug

Lore Segal

14 min

USA

“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...

The Other Woman

Sherwood Anderson

14 min

USA

Running, through the vines and tree roots, encircling my legs, pulling me back to the Napalm Apocalypse. I hear the blades of the Huey just in the clearing ready to pick me up, I can’t move,...

Invisible

Jeannean Walker

1 min

USA

I peered out the passenger seat window of my mother’s car. She shifted from second to third gear. “You want to be committed; I’ll commit you!” she spewed while the car lurched forward. My sister laid...

My Sister

Hilary Sigismondi

1 min

USA

I watched his face, nutmeg brown from the sun and criss-crossed like alpaca tracks, grow paler by the day, a yellow hue to his beautiful eyes that the doctor said was because his liver was quitting...

The Lonely Magpie

Alan S. Falkingham

1 min

USA

That autumn we knocked down the old barn foundation I asked the man with the backhoe to dig a grave in the center of a huge patch of tiger lilies. This was in case Annie died...

Dogs Know Those Who Dig Graves

Sharon Roznik

1 min

USA

It’d been a year since the fire. In the months that followed the blaze people still talked about it, still tried to understand what happened, still gathered occasionally to stare into the remains like parishioners at...

The Fire

Megan Benjamin

1 min

USA

I wait, listening for your footfalls, heavy, weary from your work. The sun will rise soon. I have readied the water; warm for your bath, cold for your clothing. The latch clicks, then the floorboards protest...

Soap and Water

Sonrisa Holmes

1 min