Short Stories Are the Perfect New Year Read

What if vampires, living in a sunny locale, decided to give up drinking blood and switch to lemons? What if a group of captive girls turned into silkworms and plotted revenge against their kidnappers? What if a group of bullies stumbled upon a scarecrow that looked uncannily like one of their former victims? These questions are more are answered in Karen Russell's endlessly imaginative debut story collection, which demonstrated her gifts of humor, melancholy, and pastiche. Some of these ideas may sound silly but Russell always imbues them with a sly wit and willingness to take them to very dark places.

The Laotian-Canadian poet and author Souvankham Thammavongsa won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for her debut short story collection, published in 2020. Taking inspiration from her own childhood and the immigrant communities she grew up in, How to Pronounce Knife is as moving as it is perceptive. The stories within are tenderly written but sharp with their sparse prose and insights into the liminal spaces between identity, family, and belonging.

Do you ever feel like you’re too online? Then Tony Tulathimutte’s startling and razor-sharp debut collection of stories will speak to you.

The seven connected stories in this National Book Award-longlisted book examine the comedic, tragic, and intensely awkward intersections of the increasingly dangerous intricacies of modern life. Through Tulathimutte's eyes, we get portraits of people left alienated by society, the internet, and their own failings. This is one of the defining texts of our current era of rage-baiting and doom-scrolling. You'll cringe as much as you laugh.

If you're interested in a deep dive into the Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor is the author for you. Her stories are bleakly funny and haunting slices of life that blend together the mundane and the bizarre.

Inspired by her upbringing in Georgia and her Catholic faith, O'Connor was fascinated by regional specificities and memorably odd characters. The typical Flannery O'Connor story is bracingly unsentimental, full of pitch-black humor, and intrusions of the grotesque. Expect serial killers, greed, bigotry, and the taboo.

George Saunders might be the most acclaimed living short story writer in modern American fiction. He's won a slew of awards and counts Barack Obama among his fans.

Tenth of December is arguably his most notable collection, with the New York Times declaring it to be one of the best books of 2013. It's the perfect example of Saunders' blend of genres, his oft-scathing satire, and his startlingly vast imagination. How many authors do you know could make you laugh and cry over a story about a pole?

Torrey Peters made history in 2021 when her debut novel, Detransition, Baby, made her the first openly trans woman nominated for the Women's Prize for fiction. She followed that up with Stag Dance, a collection of stories that further revealed her unique authorly talents.

Peters' work explores gender and queerness through unexpected lenses, putting aside notions of so-called respectability in favor of politically charged and highly subversive perspectives. In the title story, a group of lumberjacks organise a stag dance, a kind of drag ball, and fight for the honor of being the most beautiful cross-dresser.