Our Collection – Page 3 – The Short Story Project

USA

The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a...

A White Heron

Sarah Orne Jewett

16 min

Argentina

One Sunday afternoon a family was digesting its midday meal and having a desultory debate about which of the many dishes they’d just put away was chiefly responsible for their present lethargy. From one corner of...

Simidolia

Marcelo Cohen

12 min

USA

Tommy’s cousin Gabe. Tommy’s distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy’s cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a...

Gabe

Holiday Reinhorn

7 min

Morocco

I held an unusually long reed in my hand and I dipped it as deep as I could into the river. It fell in and disappeared in front of me. I took my feet out of...

Ladybird

Latifa Labsir

7 min

Israel

I wash my hands, scrubbing them. They still smell of shit. 1. Sophie went joyfully down the slide, straight into Danny’s waiting arms. When he offered to help her climb back up, she said, “By myself.”...

Safe Zone

Deakla Keydar

9 min

USA

Waythorn, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not...

The Other Two

Edith Wharton

29 min

Palestine

We didn’t stay long at the bar. After we got Melanie’s text, I had the feeling that each of us wanted the other to finish their drink so we could take off for one of our...

Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)

Saleem Albeik

7 min

The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie

UK

John’s childhood ambition was to be a pilot. Let’s sit with that a while. A boy grew up, like so many other boys all over the world, watching the skies, imagining himself in the endless blue....

The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie

15 min

UK

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was...

The Tree of Knowledge

Henry James

23 min

Russia

I could think of nothing else all month: Would they let me go to the Christmas party, or not? I was cunning. I prepared the ground. I told my mother about the glorious achievements of Zhenya Ryazanova,...

The Green Devil

Teffi

6 min

Israel

On dark, stormy nights they would run through the sleeping streets, burning torches in their hands, and no one saw their faces and no one knew their names. And the echoes of the steps of fourteen...

Autumn (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

3 min

Ireland

Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the...

The Dead

James Joyce

62 min

UK

CHAPTER I–THE PROMISE “An old-fashioned Christmas.–A lively family will accept a gentleman as paying guest to join them in spending an old-fashioned Christmas in the heart of the country.” That was the advertisement. It...

An Old-Fashioned Christmas

Richard Marsh

22 min

Iraq

Today’s Friday. I might be mistaken though, and it could be Saturday. How stupid! Why couldn’t it be Sunday or Monday? It’s not worth thinking about or even looking at the calendar. I can’t even...

He Saw Too

Irada Al-Jubori

5 min

USA

The first time Heloise saw Mitch, he was standing beside the vending machines in the hospital cafeteria, angular and fresh in his puckery clean white scrubs. She had come in for a Coke and chips, not...

Uno

Eileen Pollack

29 min

USA

My lover’s fingers are long. When he stretches them out, they bow in the middle. When they bend, he can span five frets. He sits on the wide window sill, the guitar resting on his bare...

Astronomical Objects

Liz Prato

5 min

USA

He’s confused. Too shy. His sister died of leukemia when he was thirteen. He’s not over his wife yet. He’s intimidated by your sarcastic sense of humor. You’re smarter than he is and he can’t handle...

Words to Live By

Aimee LaBrie

2 min

USA

Rita Loomis had fallen asleep at her own retirement party. Her colleague Amelia Monroe noticed this from the back of the room, embarrassed for Rita, and grateful for herself. Because until that moment, Amelia was sure...

When the Lights Go Down

Liam Callanan

12 min

USA

She wriggled, squirmed, just a little, but a little was too much. It started as a shimmy at her hips and twisted up through her shoulders, reminding her of the rippling way a wet dog shakes...

What Do You Remember?

Sally Shivnan

11 min

Germany

Lately, on the night before Whit Sunday, I dreamed that I was standing before a mirror, occupying myself with my new summer suit, which my parents had had made against the approaching festival. The dress consisted,...

The New Paris

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

21 min

UK

Margaret Mahuntleth, in the corner of the big settle, basked in the hearth-glow like one newly come to heaven. Warm light reddened her knitted shawl, her white apron, and her face, worn and frail. It was...

Over the Hills and Far Away

Mary Webb

5 min

USA

She didn’t look a thing like his girlfriend. This alone should have been a sign that she was just a fling, a diversion from what he had known for the past five years. She began to...

Guess Who Was at the Party?

Kate Hill Cantrill

7 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

USA

At the Great American Lunch Hour young George O’Kelly straightened his desk deliberately and with an assumed air of interest. No one in the office must know that he was in a hurry, for success is...

The Sensible Thing

F. Scott Fitzgerald

21 min