1. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates I’m actually reading this collection right now. I love it. Richard Yates is a short story writer who just amazes me. I am amazed reading these stories. |
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2. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter I love those old Katherine Anne Porter stories like The Old Order. I also love The Grave, which used to be in all the anthologies. I just really like the language in her stories. Her writing style is completely different from my own, but I’ve always been drawn to her work. |
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3. The Grass Harp: Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories by Truman CapoteCapote’s old story Miriam is wonderful. I also love A Christmas Memory and Tree of Night and Other Stories. Tree of Night is a very frightening short story. Capote’s writing is so lush with sensory description that in the opening description of this young woman on the train, you really just feel like you’re right there. I often use the stories in that collection with students for the physical description, but also the wonderful use of suspense. |
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4. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora WeltyI like to do a lot with memory stories in class, the kind of narrative story that gets students thinking about their own memories. For example, Tennesee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie or Eudora Welty. I use a lot of her stories. There’s such an amazing range of different styles within her stories. To read something like Where is the Voice Coming From? and then that wonderful voice in Why I Live At the P.O. is incredible. I heard a recording of Welty reading Why I Live At the P.O. when I was in college, and it was a lightbulb moment for me as a writer. Nothing ever happened in my hometown worth writing about, but when I heard that story I thought, “Oh my god. Well, that’s what I’ve heard my whole life. Maybe I, too, can tell a story.” |
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5. Birds of America: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries) by Lorrie MooreWhat I really admire about both Lorrie Moore and Amy Hempel is the hidden humor that just pops out at the end of a sentence when you least expect it. Their stories also take a lot of unexpected, dark turns. |
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6. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy HempelI teach Amy’s story In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried pretty regularly. It’s always such a hit in class and sends students in so many directions thinking of their own stories. As a teacher and as a writer, I believe one of the greatest compliments you can give someone else’s story is to say after reading it that you can’t stop thinking about your own ideas or stories that would somehow connect you emotionally to what you just read. |
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7. The Collected Stories by Grace PaleyI love Grace Paley’s stories. She has a quirky, interesting voice like nothing I’ve never heard – strong and funny. The stories are seemingly straightforward and simple, and yet, like Richard Yates’ stories, they are only simple and clear on the surface. After you put the book down you find that the stories just keeps growing and growing. They’re like those things you put in a bowl of water that are supposed to grow to a thousand times the original size. They’re suggestive, the kind of stories you can’t stop thinking about. A lot of Grace Paley’s stories have that power. |
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Here is another vote for Grace Paley, a truly remarkable writer.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout — an anthology of short stories that have common characters, so the stories become an almost-novel. I loved this book, particularly as Olive aged.