RA Mixtape: Short Stories
Andie Paloutzian, Story Center Program Manager, Woodneath Library Center, apaloutzian@mymcpl.org
Angie Strathman, Readers’ Advisory Librarian, Woodneath Library Center, astrathman@mymcpl.org
The best short fiction is only small in terms of word count. The form's true practitioners place
a premium on concision even as they allow their imaginations free rein. That tension between
control and freedom is where the short story lives.
—Richard Russo
Defining Terms:
A short story is a work of fictional prose between 5,000 and 10,000 words and can be read in a single sitting.
They can be literary fiction or genre fiction.
An essay is short non-fiction, also usually between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Essays can be personal,
journalistic, or scholarly.
Flash Fiction is further concentration of the story, It can be as short as six words and as lengthy as 1,000.
A novella is an expanded story, without becoming a true novel, usually between 10,000 and 25,000 words.
FLASH FICTION
Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009) & Can’t and Won’t
Suddenly a Knock on the Door, The Nimrod Flipout (& others) by Etgar Keret (2006)
Someday This Will Be Funny (& others) by Lynne Tillman (2011)
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife by David Eagleman (2009)
Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory (2011)
Sudden Fiction anthologies
One Hundred Apocalypses by Lucy Corin (2013)
Ecstatic Cahoots by Stuart Dybek (2014)
Marry Me by Dan Rhodes (2014)
wigleaf.com
Many stories by Mary Robison, Amy Hempel, and Lucia Berlin are only a couple of pages long.
NOVELLAS
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (2011)
The New Valley by Josh Weil (2009)
We the Animals by Justin Torres (2011)
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (2011)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (1958)
Different Seasons by Stephen King (1983)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (2007)
An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (2007)
Disquiet by Julia Leigh (2008)
The Diving Pool: Three Novellas by Yoko Ogawa (2008)
The Granta Book of the American Long Story edited by Richard Ford (1998)
A Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss (2014)
Thirteen Ways of Looking: A Novella and Three Stories by Colum McCann (2015)
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (2015)
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (Nov 2015)
Melville House Art of the Novella series http://www.artofthenovella.com/
SHORT STORIES MASQUERADING AS NOVELS
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008)
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2009)
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann (2010)
The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat (2004)
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1984)
Day for Night by Frederick Reiken (2010)
Love Medicine and other novels by Louise Erdrich (1984)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)
I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass (2008)
Our Kind by Kate Walbert (2004)
Fame by Daniel Kehlmann (2010)
Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfield (2012)
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal (2015)
LINKED STORIES
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum (2008)
The Beggar Maid: The Stories of Flo and Rose by Alice Munro (1978)
Mary and O’Neill by Justin Cronin (2001)
LINKED STORIES (cont.)
Later, at the Bar by Rebecca Barry (2007)
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919)
Fools (2014), Ideas in Heaven: A Ring of Stories by Joan Silber (2004) & others
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (1992)
Blueprints for Building Better Girls (2011) & Use Me (2000) by Elissa Schappell
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami (2002)
You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon (2011)
The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty (1947)
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood (2006)
Maples Stories/Olinger Stories/Bech Stories by John Updike
I Sailed With Magellan by Stuart Dybek (2003)
Legend of a Suicide by David Vann (2008)
Normal People Don’t Live Like This by Dylan Landis (2009)
Power Ballads by Will Boast (2011)
Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Said Sayrafiezadeh (2014)
Redeployment by Phil Klay (2014)
Refund by Karen Bender (2015)
Wonder Garden by Lauren Acamparo (2015)
Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny (2015)
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra (2015)
GROWING UP FEMALE
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer (2003)
I Knew You’d Be Lovely by Alethea Black (2011)
Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell (2011)
Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca (2010)
Living with Saints by Mary O’Connell (2001)
Nothing Right (and others) by Antonya Nelson (2009)
Love Stories in this Town by Amanda Eyre Ward (2009)
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black (2010)
Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman (2015)
See also the fiction of Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro (especially the early collections), Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum,
Danielle Evans, and Danzy Senna. Kate Chopin’s stories often focus on gender issues.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin (1965)
The Complete Stories by Zora Neale Hurston
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans (2010)
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z. Z. Packer (2004)
Lost in the City (1992) and All Aunt Hagar’s Children (2006) by Edward P. Jones
You Are Not Free by Danzy Senna (biracial) (2011)
God’s Gym (& others) by John Edgar Wideman (2005)
Best African-American Fiction
RURAL/BLUE COLLAR
American Salvage (2009) & Mothers, Tell Your Daughters (2015) by Bonnie Jo Campbell
The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell (2011)
Volt by Alan Heathcock (2011)
Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill (2011)
Trash by Dorothy Allison (1988)
Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (2008)
American Masculine by Shann Ray (2011)
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston (1992)
Men in the Making by Bruce Machart (2011)
Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy (2007)
Legend of a Suicide by David Vann (2008)
See also Raymond Carver, Wells Tower, Edward P. Jones, and Victoria Patterson for down-on-their-luck
protagonists and stories of the underclass; some stories of Denis Johnson, Rebecca Barry, Melanie Rae Thon
and Sherman Alexie for similar explorations of alcohol and drug addiction.
SENSE OF PLACE
Wyoming Stories: Close Range(1999), Bad Dirt(2004), Fine Just the Way It Is (2008) by Annie Proulx
The Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner (1990)
The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge (2003)
Best of the West 4: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri ed. by James Thomas & Denise Thomas
(1991)
American West: Twenty New Stories from the Western Writers of America edited by Loren Estleman (2001)
Mysterious West edited by Tony Hillerman (1994)
Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories by Melinda Moustakis (2011)
Drift by Victoria Patterson (the dark side of Orange County, California) (2009)
Platte River (& others) by Rick Bass (1994)
Something Rich and Strange (2015) & others by Ron Rash
Edward P. Jones captures inner-city Washington D.C., especially in Lost in the City. Stuart Dybek does the same
for the Polish Catholic neighborhoods of Chicago. New York features heavily in the stories of Deborah
Eisenberg, and many of her early stories feature visits to Latin American locales.
THE SOUTH
Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor (1971)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and other stories by Carson McCullers (1951)
Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories by Barry Hannah (2010)
Big Bad Love by Larry Brown (1990)
Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner (1950)
Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980)
Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader edited by Bryan Carpenter
INTERNATIONAL/IMMIGRANT
Love and Obstacles (2009) & The Question of Bruno (2000) by Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia)
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamonda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria, 2009)
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan (various African countries, 2008)
A Good Fall (& others) by Ha Jin (China, 2009)
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl (2010) & A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2005) by Yiyun Li (China)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (& others) by Haruki Murakami (Japan, 2006)
The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters (Japan, 2003)
Interpreter of Maladies (1999) & Unaccustomed Earth (2008) by Jhumpa Lahiri (India)
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Pakistan, 2009)
An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe, 2009)
East of the West: A Country in Stories by Miroslav Penkov (Bulgaria, 2011)
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain (Westerners in Third World countries, 2006)
Life Times: Stories 1952-2007 by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 2010)
Selected Stories by William Trevor (Ireland, 2010)
Drown (1996) & This is How You Lose Her (2012) by Junot Diaz (Dominican Republic)
The Love Object (2015) & Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien (Ireland, 2011)
Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano (Chile, 2006)
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia, 1993)
Vida by Patricia Engel (Colombia, 2010)
The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupermsith (Vietnam, 2014)
The Corpse Exhibition by Hasan Balasim (Iraq, 2014)
The Unamericans by Molly Antopol (various immigrants to U.S., 2014)
In the Country by Mia Alvar (Phillipines, 2015)
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra (Russia, 2015)
The Art of the Story: an International Collection of Short Stories edited by Mark Helpern (1999)
VARIETY HOUR (fiction with a wide range of places, time periods, styles w/in same collections)
You Think That’s Bad (& others) by Jim Shepard (historical) (2011)
Memory Wall (2010) & The Shell Collector (2002) by Anthony Doerr
The Lemon Table (2004) & Pulse (2011) by Julian Barnes
Orientation by Daniel Orozco (2011)
This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks (2011)
Ghosts of Chicago by John McNally (2008)
Music for Wartime by Rebekka Makkai (2015)
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (2015)
STORIES WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR
In the Driver’s Seat (& others) by Helen Simpson (2007)
Blasphemy (2012) & Ten Little Indians & others by Sherman Alexie (2003)
Bark (2014), Birds of America (1998), Like Life (1990), & Self Help (1985) by Lorrie Moore
Living with Saints by Mary O’Connell (2001)
Do the Windows Open? (1997) & Happy Trails to You (2008) by Julie Hecht
I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran (2012)
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris (2010)
The Last Girlfriend on Earth (2013) & Spoiled Brats (2014) by Simon Rich
Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies (1994) & Nine Inches (2013) by Tom Perrotta
The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte (2013)
We Live in Water by Jess Walter (2013)
One More Thing by B. J. Novak (2014)
Other writers whose stories frequently contain elements of wit and humor: Anne Beattie, Deborah Eisenberg,
Etgar Keret, Louise Erdrich, Kurt Vonnegut, Kevin Wilson, Pam Houston, John McNally, Wells Tower, Elizabeth
McCracken, Suzanne Rivecca, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Larry Brown, and Barry
Hannah.
ALL ABOUT STYLE (great writing)
A Model World (1991) & Werewolves in Their Youth (1999) by Michael Chabon
Where the God of Love Hangs Out (2009); Come to Me (1993); A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
(2000) by Amy Bloom
Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks (2013)
There’s Something I Want to Tell You (2015) & Gryphon: New and Selected Stories (2011) by Charles Baxter
Memory Wall (2010) & The Shell Collector (2002) by Anthony Doerr
Coast of Chicago (1990) & I Sailed With Magellan (2003) by Stuart Dybek
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010)
The Dead Fish Museum (2006) & The Point (1995) by Charles D’Ambrosio
Selected Stories (& others) by Andre Dubus (1988)
Dirty Love by Andre Dubus (2014)
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2001)
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (2009)
Thunderstruck (2014) & Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry by Elizabeth McCracken (1993)
The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories by Louise Erdrich (2009)
Honeydew (2015) & Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories (2011) by Edith Pearlman
Reasons For and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle (2009)
Family Furnishings (2014) & Wilderness Station (2015) by Alice Munro
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013) by Nathan Englander
MINIMALISM
Where I’m Calling From (& others) by Raymond Carver (1988)
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff (2008)
New Yorker Stories (2010), The State We’re In: Maine Stories (2015) & others by Anne Beattie
Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips (1979)
Rock Springs (& others) by Richard Ford (1987)
Complete Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006)
Tell Me: 30 Stories by Mary Robison (2002)
Don’t Cry (& others) by Mary Gaitskill (2009)
SLIGHTLY FANTASTIC
Willful Creatures (1998) & The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) & Color Master (2013) by Aimee Bender
The Wall of the Eye, The Wall of the Sky (1996) & Men and Cartoons (2004) & Lucky Alan (2015) by Jonathan
Lethem
The View from the Seventh Layer(2008) & Things That Fall From the Sky (2002) by Kevin Brockmeier
Magic for Beginners (2005) & Stranger Things Happen (2001) & Get in Trouble (2015) by Kelly Link
The Bloody Chamber (1979) & others by Angela Carter
Sixty Stories (1981) by Donald Barthelme
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (2009)
A Better Angel by Chris Adrian (2008)
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (1968)
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006) & Vampires in the Lemon Grove (2013) by Karen Russell
Unpossible by Daryl Gregory (2011)
Voices in the Night (2015) & We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser (2011)
Side Jobs by Jim Butcher (2010)
Pastoralia (2000), In Persuasion Nation (2006), Civilwarland in Bad Decline (1996) & Tenth of December
(2013) by George Saunders
A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel (2013)
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (2015)
Make Something Up (& others) by Chuck Pahlaniuk (2015)
Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (2015)
Year’s Best Science Fiction series
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series
Games Creatures Play, Dead but Not Forgotten & others by Charlaine Harris
Mammoth Book of Warriors and Wizardry edited by Sean Wallace (2014)
Urban Fantasy Anthology by Emma Bull (2011)
Kicking It edited by Rachel Caine and Kalyana Price (urban fantasy/paranormal, 2014)
Epic: Legends of Fantasy edited by John Joseph Adams (2014)
See also the Latin American magical realists (Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and
Italo Calvino.
ROMANCE
Hot Alphas (various authors, 2015)
Way of the Warrior: A Romance Anthology (various authors, 2015)
Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology compiled by Julie Cross (2014)
Mischief and Mistletoe (various authors, 2012)
Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance I & 2
Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion (various authors, 2014)
INSPIRATIONAL
An Amish Cradle (various authors, 2015)
Oregon Trail Romance Collection (various authors, 2015)
Sweet Surprise Romance Collection (various authors, 2014)
Preacher’s Bride Collection (various authors, 2013)
Smitten Book Club (various authors, 2014)
SCIENCE FICTION
Bradbury Stories by Ray Bradbury (2010)
The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories I & II by Ursula LeGuin
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2014)
Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard (2009)
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse & Wastelands 2 edited by John Joseph Adams (2015)
Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk edited by Sean Wallace (2015)
Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (2015)
Steampunk I, 2, & 3 edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Carbide Tipped Pens: 17 Tales of Hard Science Fiction edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi (2014)
Cyberpunk edited by Victoria Blake (2014)
Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories edited by John Joseph Adams (2012)
MYSTERY, SUSPENSE, GHOSTS, & HORROR
We’re in Trouble by Christopher Coake (2005)
Coronado by Dennis Lehane (2006)
Martini Shot by George Pelecanos (2015)
Kinsey & Me by Sue Grafton (2014)
Death Wears a Beauty Mask by Mary Higgins Clark (2015)
The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (2001)
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
Just After Sunset (and others) by Stephen King (2008)
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie
The Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy Sayers (1972)
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (2007)
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Tales by H. P. Lovecraft
Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy (2010)
Akashic Noir series (Brooklyn Noir, Los Angeles Noir, New Orleans Noir, etc)
McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon (2003)
McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories edited by Michael Chabon (2004)
Best American Mystery Series
FaceOff (2014) edited by Lee Child
A Darker Shade of Sweden: Original Stories by Sweden’s Great Crime Writers edited by Tove Alsterdal (2014)
First Thrills: High Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Writers edited by Lee Child (2010)
Love is Murder edited by Sandra Brown (2012)
GENERAL ANTHOLOGIES
Best American Short Stories/O Henry Prize Stories/Pushcart Prize Stories yearly collections
Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories edited by Tobias Wolff (1994)
Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Fiction edited by Joyce Carol Oates (2008)
The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike (1999)
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction edited by Lex Milliford &Michael Martone (2007)
The New Granta Book of the American Short Story edited by Richard Ford (2007)
The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (2004) & New American Stories (2015) edited by Ben Marcus
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro edited by Jeffrey Eugenides(2008)
Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman (2010)
Children Playing Before A Statue of Hercules edited by David Sedaris (2005)
100 Years of the Best American Stories (2015) edited by Lorrie Moore & Heidi Pitlor
“A short story is by definition an odder, more eccentric creature than a novel: a trailer, a fling,
a warm-up act, a bouillon cube, a championship game in one inning. Irresolution and
ambiguity become it; it’s a first date rather than a marriage.” Stacy Schiff
“William Carlos Williams says that the short story, which acts like the flare of a match struck in
the dark, is the only real form for describing the briefness, the brokenness and the
simultaneous wholeness of peoples’ lives.”
“Tzvetan Todorov says that the thing about a short story is it’s so short that it doesn’t allow us
the time to forget that it’s only literature and not actually life. “
AUDIO
Selected Shorts—short stories read and performed by professional actors, recorded in front of a live audience;
listen live on the radio, subscribe to the podcast, or CDs available for purchase (or borrowing from the library)
http://www.symphonyspace.org/shorts
New Yorker fiction podcast—monthly podcast featuring current New Yorker short story writers selecting,
reading, and discussing a story from another author from the New Yorker’s archives
http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction
The Moth—true stories told live http://themoth.org/
This American Life http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
Others with a storytelling bent: Unfictional, Snap Judgment, Wiretap, APM: The Story, and Risk (R-rated).
PRIZES
PEN/Malamud Award http://www.penfaulkner.org/pen_malamud_award.php
The Rea Award for the Short Story— (since 1986) awarded annually to a writer (American or Canadian) who
has made a significant contribution to the discipline of short stories as an art form
http://www.reaaward.org/
Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award—(since 2005) an international award for the year’s best
short story collection; includes the current year’s shortlist and longlist; great source for discovering
international short story collections http://www.munsterlit.ie/
The Story Prize—(since 2004) awarded to an outstanding collection of short stories published in the United
States; includes detailed descriptions of finalists and other notable collections during the year, as well as a
blog for short story news http://www.thestoryprize.org/
WEB RESOURCES
The Guardian’s Brief Survey of the Short Story—profiles and reading guides for major short story writers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/abriefsurveyoftheshortstory
The Short Review—reviews of short stories http://www.theshortreview.com/
Reading the Short Story—reviews and analysis of short stories by an English professor http://may-on-theshort-story.blogspot.com/
The Story Prize blog—interviews with short story writers and short story news
http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/
The Short Story Reader—reviews short stories published online; blogroll of where to fine short stories online
http://shortstoryreader.blogspot.com/
Five Chapters—new short story each week, published in 5 parts http://www.fivechapters.com/
Narrative—online publisher of short stories http://www.narrativemagazine.com/
Fifty-Two Stories—new story published each week http://www.fiftytwostories.com/
Andie and Angie’s Short Story Mix-Tape
Side A: Andie
“Boyfriend,” by Junot Diaz in Drown
“Vampires in the Lemon Grove,” by Karen Russell in Vampires in the Lemon Grove
“Victory Lap,” by George Saunders in Tenth of December
“Happy Endings,” by Margaret Atwood in Good Bones and Simple Murders
“Purity Test,” by Naomi Novik in Zombies vs. Unicorns
“Second Homecoming,” by Ray Bradbury in Shadow Show
“The Loser,” by Chuck Palahniuk in Stories
“The Mouse and the Snake,” by David Sedaris in Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modern Bestiary
“Revelation,” by Flannery O'Connor in Everything that Rises Must Converge
“The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” by Neil Gaiman in Angels and Visitations
Side B: Angie
“Builders” by Richard Yates in The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
“We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybek in I Sailed with Magellan
“Grand Stand-in” by Kevin Wilson in Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
“The Leopard” by Anthony Marra in The Tsar of Love and Techno
“Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff in Our Story Begins
“A Single Awe” by Christopher Coake in We’re in Trouble
“The Isabel Fish” by Julie Orringer in How to Breathe Underwater
“In the Gulf of Aden, Past the Guardafui” by Caitlin Horrocks in This Is Not Your City
“Thunderstruck” by Elizabeth McCracken in Thunderstruck
“Miracle Worker” by Mia Alvar in In the Country
“The Noble Truths of Suffering” by Aleksandar Hemon in Love and Obstacles
“Makedonija” by Miroslav Penkov in East of the West: A Country in Stories
“Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx in Close Range: Wyoming Stories
“Silver Water” by Amy Bloom in Where the God of Love Hangs Out
“Anything Helps” by Jess Walter in We Live in Water
“Dance in America” by Lorrie Moore in Birds of America