Tag: short stories

“The whiteboy said there was nothing left for me in Houston, he said that I didn’t have to punish myself, and he said my name, my actual name.”

Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Min Jin Lee, and Saul Bellow.

A trip to a Swedish stone-age burial site gives an archaeologist too close a look at death.

Roxane Gay writes about the necessary and inevitable influence of politics on literature at this fraught time in history.

“When I write, I’m creating a character, and then I’m just performing that character, and typing what they say.”

Two new books offer fresh perspective on “Otherhood,” that condition in which characters do constant, exhausting battle — for the most part — inside their own heads.

High-stakes time travel adventure from sci-fi writer Jo Lindsay Walton.

Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen talks about how ghosts and authors of fiction share a similar role in today’s culture.

A teacher helping fidgety students pass a rainy recess with a familiar game — don’t touch the floor, it’s lava! — finds that the ability to pretend takes on an unexpected gravity.

Slate is running short stories by contemporary writers based in an imagined “Trump’s America.”

Stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Chabon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and more.

Black Cardigan is a great newsletter by writer-editor Carrie Frye, who shares dispatches from her reading life. We’re thrilled to share some of them on Longreads. Go here to sign up for her latest updates. * * * There’s a wonderful, creepy Shirley Jackson story—you may already know it—called “The Summer People.” It’s about a couple from New York […]

Below is a guest post from Mumbai-based writer-filmmaker—and longtime #longreads contributor—Pravesh Bhardwaj (@AuteurPravesh).

The Harper’s digital archive is a small and unsung national treasure, at least as far as I’m concerned; I’ve spent countless hours sifting through old issues, scanning for early work from familiar names and tracking down forgotten gems from authors whose bylines have largely faded. One such writer is Margot Hentoff, whose short story “Where Do […]

Angela Carter’s short story “The Merchant of Shadows” first appeared in The London Review of Books in 1989. Set in Hollywood, the narrator is a young, male student conducting research on a famed but mysterious director. The story bends and twists, ricocheting between dark comedy, deep camp, and Carter’s signature surreal, Gothic sensibility. Carter was an ardent fan […]

Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Work in Progress site has excerpted the first story from A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, the newly released collection of short fiction by the late Lucia Berlin–who died in 2004, and was largely overlooked while she was alive. In the book’s foreword, author Lydia Davis writes, “Perhaps, with the […]

“I love this story for its wryness and subtlety, but most especially for its willingness to take me where I don’t want to go.”

I don’t care that the earth’s shadow eclipses the moon, said the Admiral. I have seen terrific irregularity with mine own eyes, and have been forced to the sensible conclusion that this earth is not round as some wrongly insist, but the shape of a pear or violin. A thousand years before the Admiral made […]

She published a short story in The New Yorker in 1992, then seemed to all but disappear. How author Katherine Heiny took her sweet time on the path toward publishing her new story collection.

Below is a guest post from Pravesh Bhardwaj, a filmmaker based in Mumbai who has been posting his favorite short stories all year. 

Then he had things to tell her about himself. The fact that he had produced a condom did not mean that he was a regular seducer. In fact, she was only the second person he had gone to bed with, the first being his wife. He had been brought up in a fiercely religious household […]

In case you’ve missed them, here’s a quick list of some of the most recent #longreads #fiction picks from the community: 1. “The Side Sleeper” (Emily Schultz, Taddle Creek) RT @taddlecreek: “The Side Sleeper”: a longish short story by @manualofstyle (Emily Schultz). taddlecreekmag.com/the-side-sleep… #longreads #fiction — Joyland Magazine (@joylandfiction) May 9, 2013 2. “We Have […]

If you really love a story, we want to hear from you. Share your favorite stories with Longreads—old or new, nonfiction or fiction, book or magazine feature—and then tell us why you love it. If we like it, we’ll feature you and your pick.  *** Today’s guest pick comes from Hilary Armstrong, a literature student at […]

Our Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring The New Yorker, Esquire, Miami New Times, Columbia Magazine, New York magazine, and a guest pick by Greg Spielberg.