Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie...

A Pair of Silk Stockings

Kate Chopin

5 min

USA

At the end of the third week of April, Anna looked to her calendar and felt nothing for the retriever who’d started off the month with such vivacity. It had excessive hair, as usual, billowing in...

The JPEG

Rachel B. Glaser

12 min

USA

This dress I am wearing in this black-and-white photograph, taken when I was two years old, was a yellow dress made of cotton poplin (a fabric with a slightly unsmooth texture first manufactured in the French...

Biography of a Dress

Jamaica Kincaid

9 min

USA

It was a day of holocausts, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished. But to put it simply, the...

No News, or What Killed the Dog?

Ray Bradbury

9 min

USA

1982. Without her, for years now, murmur at the defrosting refrigerator, “What?” “Huh?” “Shush now,” as it creaks, aches, groans until the final ice block drops from the ceiling of the freezer like something vanquished. Dream, and...

How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)

Lorrie Moore

11 min

USA

As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile....

Walking Out

David Quammen

44 min

USA

42–PIEDMONT. Slow bus to Jack London Square. Maids and old ladies. I sat next to an old blind woman who was reading Braille, her finger gliding across the page, slow and quiet, line after line. It...

A Manual for Cleaning Women

Lucia Berlin

14 min

USA

When I try to remember how I ended up spending an entire summer in Samarkand, I am reminded of an anecdote about the folk hero Nasreddin Hoca. Walking along a deserted road one night, the story...

Summer in Samarkand

Elif Batuman

25 min

USA

Ten candles in a fish stick tell you it’s Gully’s birthday. The birthday girl is the center of attention; she squints into the popping flash cubes. The black cat seems to know every smooth cat pose...

At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom

Amy Hempel

7 min

USA

Traveling with a movie star Twice I have sat next to a famous man on an airplane. The first man was Jason Kidd, of the New Jersey Nets. I asked him why he didn’t fly...

Roy Spivey

Miranda July

11 min

USA

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic...

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

24 min

USA

It was all to be done in thirds. I was to get 1/3 for doing the typing, and she was to get 1/3 for doing the editing, and he was to get 1/3 for writing the...

1/3 1/3 1/3

Richard Brautigan

6 min

USA

She sat on a chair her hair cut short revealing her narrow neck. I wanted to cry and I wasn’t quite sure why exactly, that’s not true, I knew why. She gave me that intrusive thought that...

The Parts Where Your Pee Comes From

Emily Brout

6 min

USA

Understand Blue Falls, how it got its name, how in dry years, in autumn, water slips over a flat edge, sheer and perfect, a wide liquid sheet reflecting a clear day—blue as an unraveling bolt of...

Six Ways to Jump off a Bridge

Brian Leung

15 min

USA

We have all these favorite shows coming on every evening. They say it will be exciting and it always is. They give us hints of what is to come and then it comes and it is...

Television

Lydia Davis

4 min

USA

It began in a hailstorm in 1975 when Benito Picone trotted across Market Street with his briefcase gripped overhead, shielding him both from the falling sky and, inadvertently, the oncoming Buick. His legs buckled on the...

The Last Words of Benito Picone

Anthony Marra

16 min

USA

Soldiers of the G.A.R. stand alongside the tracks. They are General Dodge’s soldiers, keeping the tracks maintained for the Lincoln Train. If I stand right, the edges of my bonnet are like blinders and I can’t...

The Lincoln Train

Maureen F. McHugh

22 min

USA

I woke up shaking, alone in my room. I was clammy cold with sweat; under me the sheet and the mattress were soaked. The sheet was gray and twisted like a rope. I breathed like I...

Previous Condition

James Baldwin

23 min

USA

I met the first man as I was going home from a dance at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall. I was being taken out of the dance by my two good friends. I had forgotten...

Two Men

Denis Johnson

10 min

USA

Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He...

Bullet in the Brain

Tobias Wolff

7 min

PolandUSA

I hail from a town, which has made a great name for itself in the world; everywhere, in every corner of the Diaspora, its name is and stories are told about it, hundred-year-old Chelm stories. It...

The Big Light

Eliezer Bloom

7 min

USA

The first time, he was fishing with Danny. fishing was a sacrament, and therefore, after the strike, when his head was clear, there was the blurry aftertaste of ritual: the casting of the spoon in lazy...

The Lightning Man

David Means

14 min