Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Canada

A Family Conclave EMILY wakened at daylight the next morning. Through her low, uncurtained window the splendour of the sunrise was coming in, and one faint, white star was still lingering in the crystal-green sky over...

Emily from New Moon – Chapter 4

Lucy Maud Montgomery

13 min

Iran

It was the longest night of winter. At the bottom of the sea, an old fish gathered together 12,000 of her children and grandchildren and began to tell them this story: Once upon a time a...

Little Black Fish

Samad Behrangi

22 min

Tunisia

Emerging from his plastic cave awash in filth, Crow “J” toddled unsteadily over to the paved road with sullen, terse gasps. The radiant disk was rising from the mouth of the earth as he advanced through...

One of Them

Aziz Jamal Yahyawi

2 min

Syria

I learned of the character of drugs and the nature of poisons from an alchemist – an Arab alchemist from the outskirts of Baghdad who had come to work as a physician in the palace of...

The Veiled Man

Jan Dost

6 min

Sweden

I was intending to paint a picture of David as the Shepherd, but nowhere could I find a suitable model for the face; there were several white and ruddy,’ but none which had on them the impress...

Hylas

Eric Stenbock

12 min

Spain

I remember it was almost summer, and I called from my office, between patients, to make the appointment. Paz had recommended a beauty salon that happened to be near my parents’ house. I made an appointment...

What We’ve Become

Margarita Leoz

14 min

Spain

She’s getting naked. Something either very bad or very good is happening. Happening to me. Whatever it is, my parents can’t find out. I’m at a friend’s house. Nothing strange there. But my new friend, half...

Nam

María Fernanda Ampuero

12 min

Russia

Our friends the Zaitsevs live out of town “The air is so much better out in the suburbs,” they say. That is, they can’t afford to live where the air is bad. A small group of...

The White Flower

Teffi

4 min

Algeria

Due to the imminent end of my summer break, and shortly before resuming my work at the Teacher Training College at the beginning of the third week of September, I reassured my wife, Zuleika al-Nadra, that...

Chaim and Me (A chapter from novel)

Habib Sayah

6 min

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

USA

Mom gave me a block of cheddar cheese and a sleeve of Fig Newtons when I left home for California in August of 1983. Apparently back then, when crossing the country alone in an unreliable foreign...

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

Mimi Broihier

9 min

Israel

“I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones 1 The road descends all the way to the sea, as though the whole world was a huge basin where everything drove, sailed, glided...

And The Sea Is Not Full

Edna Shemesh

11 min

Italy

“As long as there’s the sun … the sun!” the voice of Don Peppino Quaglia crooned softly near the doorway of the low, dark, basement apartment. “Leave it to God,” answered the humble and faintly cheerful...

A Pair of Eyeglasses

Anna Maria Ortese

25 min

Mexico

In the early nineties, The Beach of The Dead was little more than a greyish strip at one end of Boca del Rio, Veracruz’ twin city. Its burning sands were covered in spiny scrubs festooned with...

The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead

Fernanda Melchor

8 min

Sweden

When Dad’s eyelids drop like a guillotine she pulls the car door shut with a click. He turns his gaze to the road, and from her shady spot in the backseat she can only see his...

The Father Hole

Andrea Lundgren

32 min

Germany

We used to jump, Lydia and I, as high and as often as we could, hands high over our heads, wearing colourful dresses, our knees pulled up, our feet in stout shoes we were allowed to...

Lydia

Zsuzsa Bánk

10 min

USA

That winter, like every winter before it, my father woke early each day and turned up the thermostat so the house would be warm by the time my mother and I got out of bed. Sometimes...

Glossolalia

David Jauss

34 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

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

USA

“Win, win, win, win, win, win, win!!” was the incessant cry of our stepmother Sophie. It was the command that drove our household. She was a slight woman with a turned-up nose and a perky hairdo...

The Real Mother’s Song

Geoff Schmidt

9 min

USA

Way over there, the boy could see them, in the deep end, his mother and the man his mother said he’d better stop calling Dan Dog. They were all the way over there, doing what his...

Make Me Do Things

Victoria Redel

5 min

Canada

My cat is in the driveway, gnawing on fine bones. The rain has begun: a warm muzzled sound, large soft drips, not the rapid dark downpour of yesterday. Everything wet and green, sopping, soaking. My cat...

Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters

Jessica Treat

4 min

USA

Ben was my summer boyfriend, my “older man,” Mom called him. He was twelve, and I was eleven, a skinny eleven, though I believed my breasts appeared acceptable to those who mattered. He lived usually with...

How to Be a Prisoner

Jessica Hollander

3 min

USA

Yoshi Takamata moved from Kyoto to Connecticut at the age of fifteen, and his three years of American high school, followed by four years at local college and two decades in New York City, had done...

The Flower of One’s Heart

Panio Gianopoulos

25 min

USA

During the early years of the Ming Dynasty, one young woman in particular was praised for her beauty. Of course there were other beauties, but wherever Liling went, admirers clapped, as if she were on stage...

Liling

Kelly Cherry

5 min