Our Collection | The Short Story Project

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

USA

It is past midnight and Janet is up in the oak tree. She is the bird with black feathers. When she twitches her head the tips of her black feathered braids just brush the tips of...

Man in Gorilla Suit by Moonlight

Tehila Lieberman

10 min

Israel

I can’t recall when I first started scribbling those little notes I later stashed in various hiding places around the apartment. It sure as hell could not have been a lot earlier, because at the time...

Sunflowers

Michal Yaara Carmi

3 min

Israel

The alien wasn’t green and had no antennas on his head. He looked ordinary except that he was about a quarter size. In fact, with his gray clipped mustache and his gloomy countenance he reminded me...

Alien

Zeev Smilansky

8 min

Sweden

A cat was lying in the ditch by the exit road to Skogså, one of those long, strange autumn days when I’d just entered seventh grade but mostly tried to learn about magic, if any occult...

The Cat

Andrea Lundgren

24 min

USA

Hugh Furlong tells people that the single, snapshot moment that’s been burned into his brain to mark the end of his childhood was the moment he saw his brother Peter’s fist make contact with Albert Frank’s...

Pan and Pirates

Ashley Cowger

11 min

USA

My parents always had visitors. They would come in the evening and sit in folding chairs on the back porch of our small house in New Brunswick. They greeted me—an only child —with the warmth of...

The Last Communist

Steven Schwartz

32 min

USA

SOV THADE TAGE EM EREB, OF RER IN KARHIDE, ON GETHEN I live in the oldest city in the world. Long before there were kings in Karhide, Rer was a city, the marketplace and meeting ground...

Coming of Age in Karhide

Ursula Le Guin

31 min

USA

His father was now his mother but he was still an epic asshole. “He won’t even let me get a tattoo,” Josh said. “He gets his whole dick cut off and he won’t even let me...

Bull

Kathy Anderson

11 min

Israel

“Sonya, how could you? How can you wear those short dresses covered with pea-green dots?” “Sonya, have you said your prayers?” “Sonya, how can you listen to those fascists?” “Sonya, have you read Sholem Aleichem?”...

Chicken Morning, Noon and Night

Tasha Karluka

8 min

USA

My hatred for Agnes led directly to our family’s appearance on Oprah. You’d say, oh, you didn’t hate her; she was just your older sister. But she was not my older sister. She looked older, but...

Antropolis

Sharma Shields

15 min

Israel

On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She...

Heart of Stone

Nir Yehudai

26 min

Slovakia

My mother said to me: ‘You must go to school, or they will lock up your father.’ There were five of us children at home, four girls and one boy. The eldest was my sister, then...

How I Went to School

Tera Fabiánová

18 min

Ireland

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The...

Eveline

James Joyce

7 min

Israel

I remember when my breasts developed. I would hold them in my hands, squeeze them in front of the mirror, examining them from every angle. I inspected the color of the nipple, checked for the first...

Breasts

Yoav Katz

27 min

UK

Prison more like, said Madeleine. Come now, said Mr Kramer. If I run away they bring me back, said Madeleine. Yes but, said Mr Kramer. Mr Kramer often said, Yes but to Madeleine. Something...

Asylum

David Constantine

12 min

Chile

How could I serve myself from such distant plates, when the home had broken, when not even mother could be forced from the lips. How could I dine on nothing. César Vallejo I was born...

The Need to Be a Son

Andrea Jeftanovic

10 min

Ireland

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its...

Araby

James Joyce

6 min

Israel

Mr. Harlamov was a big man. He was a fearless man too and when he sat himself down at the harmonium (which was a kind of piano played with a foot bellows, or a kind of...

Harlamov

S. Yizhar

9 min

Israel

In the geography lesson the teacher, Mr. Levy, was talking about the Yarkon, and for this reason Hefzibah locked herself in the Girls’ Room during the morning recess. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher...

Invisible Mending

Ruth Almog

20 min

Israel

A few months before Mother’s madness was officially announced, though there were hints that something out of the ordinary was happening, and our daily routine suffered small blows, life went on and the days were all...

Will Somebody Please Shut the Gate

Mira Magen

13 min

Germany

Holger’s parents had already gone to bed. The taste of unfamiliar toothpaste on my tongue, I was sitting on the duvet in my pyjamas. Holger was standing by the aquarium and feeding the guppies. ‘Oh no,...

Nowhere Else

Matthias Brandt

14 min

Germany

It was the end of January, not long after the Christmas holidays, when the fat girl came to me. That winter I had started lending books to the children from the neighbourhood, who were supposed to...

The Fat Girl

Marie Luise Kaschnitz

10 min

Israel

Before Elyakum reached the age of seven, he had found the woman of his dreams and swore he would marry her. She was round all over, even her nose was round, not protruding very far from...

The Seamstress

Benjamin Tammuz

17 min