Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

There’s a handsaw hanging on the wall of my living room, a house key from a giant’s pocket. It’s been there a long time. “What’s your saw for?” people ask, and I say, “It’s not my...

Some Terpsichore

Elizabeth McCracken

18 min

Argentina

The door of the bus opened. From her seat, Elena watched the passengers climb in. “Where does he think all those people are going to go?” she asked her daughter, who was sitting next to the...

The Secret

Alejandra Laurencich

6 min

UK

More than a thousand years ago, in a country quite on the other side of the world, it fell out that the people all grew so very polite that they hardly ever spoke to each other....

A Toy Princess

Mary de Morgan

12 min

El Salvador

I went out because I was invited. I had just showered and was peeking out my bedroom window when, all of a sudden, I saw myself pass by. But it wasn’t the me that I’d just...

Invitation

Claudia Hernández

4 min

USA

I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure...

I Stand Here Ironing

Tillie Olsen

9 min

UK

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one...

The Mark on the Wall

Virginia Woolf

12 min

UK

Before she went to Nigeria Julie bought twelve pairs of sharp dressmaking scissors. Good equipment showed respect. And buying things made it easier not to panic. She was afraid the women would resent her swanning in,...

Red Enters the Eye

Jane Rogers

15 min

UK

At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too...

The Lady of the House of Love

Angela Carter

27 min

France

In Rue Las Cases it was as quiet as during the height of summer, and every open window was screened by a yellow blind. The fine weather had returned: it was the first Sunday of spring,...

Sunday

Irène Némirovsky

24 min

Israel

“Did he talk to you?” “Not a word till Bilu Junction.” “And then?” “And then he slowed down and showed me the ugly shopping center they’re building there.” “Well, it all came as a surprise to...

Thorns

Sharon Horodi

13 min

Israel

Francesca, a leggy young woman with a blue streak running through her thick mane of hair, crossed the park quickly. The dry leaves on the path crackled pleasantly beneath her feet. The scent of roasted chestnuts...

The Enemy of the Love Story

Alma Ganihar

17 min

Spain

The first thing that hit me when I entered, I mean my first impression, was of walking into a place that was extremely strange and humid and dark, not just because of the closed doors and...

Just a Few Millimeters

Sara Mesa

24 min

Israel

Paul Nimoro was Japanese. He was many things; but above all, he was Japanese and he valued the qualities he knew he had inherited‒ precision, self-discipline and along with them, perhaps less visible but still present...

Dune

Dorit Peleg

13 min

USA

Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a...

Emerald City

Jennifer Egan

14 min

UK

“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a...

Philomel Cottage

Agatha Christie

31 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

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Israel

Bella loved it, to drive through the sleepy burnt out city, nothing but a few lit windows; and outside the darkness, thin and tangible. This time she was completely guilt free, despite leaving her two babies...

The Sad and Ambitious Girls of the Province

Nurit Zarchi

18 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

Finland

What is it that drives and compels people? I thought as I moved with the crowd of people toward the passport check. What gypsy blood moves me? I thought when I saw my bag x-rayed, and...

Hunger

Raija Siekkinen

6 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

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

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

Argentina

Lutan showed me into a bright room with white walls and high ceilings. She didn’t seem surprised to see me show up at her door after three years and in a country where we were both...

Still Lutan

María Martoccia

13 min