Our Collection – Page 2 – The Short Story Project

USA

From May to September Delia took the Churro sheep and two dogs and went up on Joe-Johns Mountain to live. She had that country pretty much to herself all summer. Ken Owen sent one of his...

Lambing Season

Molly Gloss

22 min

Israel

His heart suddenly flipped over in his chest. “Just like a carp in the kitchen sink,” Grigory Katz thought. To calm himself down, he stuck his nose into his scarf and breathed in his own warm...

Rooms

Anna Likhtikman

8 min

USA

When my husband first announced that he was leaving me, there were no packed bags. No studio apartment had already been leased on the other, seedier side of town. There were no missing photo albums or...

Dear John

Sarah Gerkensmeyer

5 min

USA

The restaurant is crazy busy and my entire head is engulfed in the heat and steam and smell of all the dishes being cooked and readied on the line. I am tired. I am always tired...

Abracadabra

Diane Goodman

14 min

Israel

On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She...

Heart of Stone

Nir Yehudai

26 min

UK

Katherine Farquhar was a handsome woman of forty, no longer slim, but attractive in her soft, full, feminine way. The French porters ran round her, getting a voluptuous pleasure from merely carrying her bags. And she...

The Border-Line

D.H. Lawrence

36 min

USA

Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years and had liked it very well. Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been in...

The Gentle Lena

Gertrude Stein

54 min

Mexico

Sunshine crept into the room, forming a white frame around the short dark curtain that barely covered the window. The glow around the darkened window reminded him of Malevich’s black square. He sighed. Vera would have...

The Square

Elisa R.V. García

1 min

Poland

My grandmother lived in Podlasie. The house wasn’t in the village itself. The neighborhood was known as “the colony”—scattered farms separated by stands of aspen and avenues of age-old, slender poplars. The cottage stood amid an...

Grandmother and the Ghosts

Andrzej Stasiuk

6 min

Palestine

(From Letters to the Editor) We chose this letter amongst hundreds of letters that the newspaper receives. The reader preferred to sign his letter with R.A.; he asked for it to be published in the...

R.A. Looks for his Eyes

Sheikha Hussein Helawy

3 min

Venezuela

How could Edgardo have hunted an animal if he didn’t even know how to love, much less kill. He’d become a useless idler, sitting all day in front of the television set or on the computer...

Silver Pistols

Liliana Lara

10 min

Israel

Night has descended on the military headquarters. Darkness veiling the barracks like a dewy tarpaulin. A man’s shadow stretches from the top floor of the Ministry of Defense’s office like a large bird, then vanishes, leaving...

Meningitis

Yitzhak Laor

24 min

UK

Prison more like, said Madeleine. Come now, said Mr Kramer. If I run away they bring me back, said Madeleine. Yes but, said Mr Kramer. Mr Kramer often said, Yes but to Madeleine. Something...

Asylum

David Constantine

12 min

USA

Elli wouldn’t let me stop until we’d crossed the line into Utah. She was a nail in the passenger seat—rigid, sharp, her blue eyes darting back and forth between the speedometer and the double yellow lines....

End Times

Maxim Loskutoff

12 min

Israel

That summer, I’d go there sometimes, and this week, I went again. It was a hot day at the end of summer. A hot wind blew from time to time, stopped suddenly and returned suddenly, full...

Apples in Honey

Yehudit Hendel

11 min

Spain

Miriam tells them that he built the house himself with his own hands. She tells them how he piled up the rocks on rainy days, so that they’d get good and soaked before he soldered them...

Second Residence

Margarita Leoz

10 min

USA

Here in the city lives a prince whose left arm is like any other man’s and whose right arm is a swan’s wing. He and his eleven brothers were turned into swans by their vituperative stepmother,...

A Wild Swan

Michael Cunningham

5 min

Israel

My father died at six in the evening. After the doctor told us the news, we went home. Ariane drove, and I sat next to her. Neither of us spoke. The taste of the coffee from...

Coffee

Gadi Taub

7 min

USA

Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr....

Time and Again

Breece D'J Pancake

6 min

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Slovenia

Cracks Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It appears you’ll...

Cracks | Mainland

Andrej Blatnik

3 min

Austria

It has to be done, that’s clear, and today’s the day. Anne has an appointment – today, not tomorrow – and she’ll go there, and they’ll suck the embryo out of her. She’s going on her...

If That’s How It Is

Dorian Steinhoff

14 min

Colombia

Ricardo González loved to go to the cinema. His first major cinematic memory, many years ago now, was of a black-and-white film about cops and robbers. Before that he only went to the cinema occasionally, once...

The Spectator

Andrés Caicedo

12 min

Denmark

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening – the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded,...

The Little Match Girl

Hans Christian Andersen

4 min

Hungary

Autumn Translated by Mark Baczoni Sylvester Gács, a forester with the North Hungarian Forestry Service, patrolled the woods (every tree of which he knew by heart), doing the rounds of the pathways he himself had...

One Minute Stories

István Örkény

8 min

France

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of...

The Diamond Necklace

Guy de Maupassant

11 min

France

She saw me, she sighed, she guessed right away. “It was well worth it,” she said. She looked at me for a long time. “Lucie would like you to help her with her homework,” she said....

The Last Charge of the Russian Cossacks

Mathias Énard

4 min

Israel

I used to meet him sometimes in the street or in the park opposite my house. Over the years we became friends in a way, and he would nod to me as old friends do, and...

The Dancer

Yehudit Hendel

8 min

France

From my patio, I can see George at the edge of his pool, thirty yards down the hillside. A thicket separates us, which covers an incline of red, cracked earth, bordered on both sides by walls...

George’s Wife

Véronique Bizot

11 min

Germany

…and found her sleeping with sadness. The first words in the morning, the underlined phrase in the book with a ribbon marker, a present from Marie, and the sun rises behind the chestnut trees of the...

Gethsemane

Ralf Rothmann

9 min

Germany

You pressed your Nazi grandfather’s signet ring into my hand and asked me to throw it in the sea or some other body of water. Because you couldn’t. And I said: I’m not doing that; he...

We Were Fishing For Rockets

Karen Köhler

9 min

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Germany

When Ferdinand Klingenreiter asked the audience, dear friends and family, boys and girls, to be quiet for his great illusion, some laughed; most went on talking. The Stadelmann girls interrupted their squealing chase and turned towards...

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Saša Stanišić

16 min

Germany

Mother disappeared on the twentieth of August nineteen ninety-eight at around eleven fifty at night. At around eight thirty in the morning of the twenty-first of August nineteen ninety-eight, Father called and informed me: ‘Mother died...

Motherdeath

Michael Lentz

22 min

Russia

“To whom shall I tell my grief?” The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...

Misery

Anton Chekhov

8 min

Greece

In memory of Frieda Liappa I dreamt that it was evening –and it was. I could hear nearby the bells from a flock, scattered here and there. The flock moved onwards, hidden behind the night...

An Almost Sky Blue Hand

Rhea Galanaki

4 min

USA

‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...

An Alcoholic Case

F. Scott Fitzgerald

9 min

Puerto Rico

Sharon took advantage of the fact that we were washing the dishes to tell me she had been thinking about the day when Willie, my lover, would no longer be with us. “I can’t stop thinking...

The Garden

Luis Negrón

11 min

Taiwan

He turned his computer off and on again six times, took his first shower of the week, and went downstairs for some cold noodles and a packet of cigarettes. Only then did he dare believe what...

The Girl of his Dreams

Sabrina Huang

13 min

Israel

Lacking any alternative image, we turn to the moment of creation. The form bursting from the awkwardness of matter. No, not the awkwardness, the indifference towards being. This time, I am ready; this time, I’ve prepared....

Ishmael

Shimon Adaf

7 min

Turkey

Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for...

The Snow Traveller

Ayfer Tunç

24 min

Poland

The best ideas always came to her at night, as if she were a completely different person at night than in the day. That’s trite, he would have said. He would have changed the subject, begun...

An Evening with the Author

Olga Tokarczuk

20 min

Malta

This time she’s building a city. The first city after eleven islands in a row, now gathered together in the soft red folder which, when her father goes out for a coffee in the evenings and she finds herself...

At Livia’s Bar

Pierre J. Mejlak

5 min

Israel

When you look at things from outside, everything seems like a sort of colorful jigsaw. A mosaic of price stickers covers the products in the supermarket: the oldest are white, the two-week-old ones are yellow, and...

Twice

Bella Shaier

13 min

Israel

She was so glad the wedding was over. The unadorned car stopped in front of the hotel at the far end of the esplanade. They stepped out, he and the driver, his best friend, hugged before...

Honey

Liat Elkayam

12 min

Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing)

Germany

That night I ran into the fox again at the corner of my road, just after one. And like the last time, he stopped and turned his head towards me and we stared at each other...

Prenzlauer Berg by Night (Nothing Doing)

Annett Gröschner

17 min

USA

THE GRANDMOTHERS — dozens of them — find themselves at sea. They do not know how they got there. It seems to be afternoon, the glare from the sun keeps them squinting. They wander carefully, canes...

Safe Passage

Ramona Ausubel

15 min

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

Brazil

That first time we had a marmoset in the house was around New Year’s. We had no running water and no maid, people were lining up to buy meat, the summer heat had exploded—and that was...

Monkeys

Clarice Lispector

3 min

France

I haven’t had any news. It’s been almost eight years. At first, I had high hopes. I couldn’t imagine that she’d disappeared forever. She would come back. One day, I would hear her voice in the...

Regina

Gilles Rozier

4 min

Brazil

Garcia was standing, staring at his fingernails and cracking his knuckles from time to time; Fortunato, in a rocking chair, looked at the ceiling; Maria Luisa, near the window, was finishing off some needlework. For five...

The Hidden Cause

Machado de Assis

14 min

Denmark

It was the night Dirch Passer the comedian died. He collapsed onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was...

The Winter Garden

Dorthe Nors

4 min

Israel

Also, I’m crazy about him and I don’t care what the neighbors say. I’ll even wear a leather skirt slit up to here if he wants. And with no underwear either. Nu, I’m a crazy old...

Gabriella (from Liebchen)

Yossi Waxman

13 min

Egypt

The last thing I decided I would do before going away was to say farewell to my grandma. By noon I was watching Ghasreen, a small town located at the heart of a small valley. It...

The Open Door

Abd al Rahman Munif

26 min

Uruguay

One thing is certain: that every day he will be older, further away from the time when he used to be called Bob, with his fair hair hanging over one of his temples, his smile and...

Welcome, Bob

Juan Carlos Onetti

14 min