Tag: short story

When accompanying his father to the emergency room, a writer reflects on how he developed his talent — and why that’s a story he can never tell his father.

A forester’s daughter spends a night in a cabin in Soviet Russia, but it takes decades to discover how much danger she put her family in.

Many of us can viscerally remember what it was like to be young and overwhelmed by the power of our youth.

In this short story, the children of Chinese miners in the frontier West struggle to survive after their parents’ death.

Susan Read’s short fiction centers on a Kafka-esque interrogation in the back room of a coffee shop — you know, the one where they wear the green aprons — that’s a stinging indictment of the byzantine policies, procedures, and psychology of being a low wage employee.

Two young sisters living in Thailand sneak off their diplomatic compound for a night of beauty and danger in this spellbinding short story.

“These stories are a marvel and will break your heart.”

Dorthe Nors | Longreads |  August 2015 |  8 minutes (1,904 words)   Our latest Longreads Exclusive is a previously unpublished short story by Danish writer Dorthe Nors, translated into English by Misha Hoekstra, and chosen by Longreads contributing editor A. N. Devers, who writes:  “I first came across the intriguingly sparse work of Dorthe Nors in the pages of the literary […]

The truth was that the Mister had always been dishonest. Not with his feelings but with his heart. He would be the first to tell you how honest he was about his dishonesties. He was like a chronic bed-wetter; he could not control himself. He would always be a bed-wetter even if he were not […]

A short story by Megan Mayhew Bergman, imagining the life and mysterious death of Oscar Wilde’s niece, Dorothy Wilde.

Huckleberry seized my hand, clasping it so tight he brought back in a quick flood of feelings those years with the Widow Watson, and whispered as if he wanted only me and not his friend to hear, “You take care of yourself, Jim, and keep out of all that trouble, please, cause this world is […]

The complicated history of one of New York City’s immigrants, a former Hungarian General who realizes he spent one of his best days with his worst enemies.

A Longreads Exclusive: The newly translated short story from Silvina Ocampo’s collection, Thus Were Their Faces.