Our Collection - The Short Story Project

After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

F. Scott Fitzgerald

35 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

UK

People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half...

Hodge

Elinor Mordaunt

31 min

Russia

In the cemetery above a fresh mound of earth stands a new cross of oak⁠—strong, heavy, smooth, a pleasant thing to look at. It is April, but the days are grey. From a long way off...

Gentle Breathing

Ivan Bunin

9 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

Canada

When she woke in the morning there beside her was the boy she had dismissed the night before as far too ugly and ingratiating, and on the other side, even more of a surprise, the boy...

The Girl Who Planted Flowers

Sheila Heti

2 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 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

Israel

My father believed in Marxist karma as a thrilling destiny that was tailored to the measurements of his short, solid body. He viewed the world through defiant, eroding eyes, as if endowed with the ability to...

The First Of May

Iftach Alony

3 min

Scotland

The sun rises up the moss-covered walls to slip between the open concrete slabs and across the white tiled floor of the hawker centre, where June is wiping tables with a cloth that has become part...

Mee Goreng

CG Casci

16 min

Spain

I DO not know whether this is history which seems like a tale, or a tale which seems like history; what I can affirm is that in its core it contains a truth, a truth supremely...

THE RAY OF MOONSHINE

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

10 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

France

It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space,...

The Piano

Romain Rolland

19 min

France

Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such, as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it—it touched his vanity—but...

Visiting The House of The Rich

Romain Rolland

15 min

Romania

For Freddie, Brian, John, Roger, and Cătălina It’s complicated, complicated as hell. You fall head over heels for Elisabeta Ciupercă, your sexiest classmate in the eighth grade, a drum solo pounds in your chest cavity every...

39′

Radu Paraschivescu

21 min

Israel

Once I ran away. It was in kindergarten. I had known for some time that the fence between the schoolyard and the adjoining public park had fallen over. A thicket of oleander grew behind it. One...

A Break in the Fence

Ariel Hirschfeld

5 min

Israel

To Tami Berger In the corner café that had recently changed owners stood a parrot’s cage. A green cage with a domed top, a swing fixed inside it, and a slot and small drawer at the...

A Girl in the Café

Ronit Matalon

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

Russia

Here once lived a girl who was beloved by her mother but no one else. The girl was used to it and didn’t get too upset. Her name was Oksana – a glamorous, fashionable name —...

Like Penelope

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

16 min

Gaza

I opened my eyes to the world in a city with a lifeless childhood. I opened my eyes in the battlefield. Nobody told me who the soldiers were, or what occupation is. I grew up having...

Endgame

Abdalhadi Alijla

4 min

Israel

It was the last summer before they gave the Sinai back to Egypt. I was thirteen and I drove with my parents and their friends down to Ras Burka. I think that must have been our...

Flies

Eshkol Nevo

10 min

A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company

Israel

While I was waiting for Eriksson, I decided to get rid of all my meds. I packed them in clear garbage bags and went downstairs to the trashcan, my hands full of Lomotil, Hismanal, Diazepam, Ampicillin,...

A Black Dancer in a One-person Dance Company

Esty G. Haim

14 min

Israel

When everything in the house is upside down and all mixed up, it means only one thing: we’ve got company. It doesn’t matter how many guests there are — one or thirty-one — before their arrival,...

Being Frosya Shneerson (Chapter 6)

Tasha Karluka

8 min