26Shorts2026: prompt --- set in North America

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                  🔷     26 Shorts for 2026
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                  🔷      prompt: SET IN NORTH AMERICA
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Discuss and share - topic: set in North America. Some countries included are: Canada, the United States, and Mexico, plus Central America and the Caribbean islands.

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  #26shorts2026

Completed prompt

I started my challenge a bit earlier because my reading year always runs from the 24th of December to the 23rd of December. I hope that's ok!

I read Cruel Winter With You, a short story by Ali Hazelwood. It is a love story set during Christmas, so it fits several prompts, but I decided to use it for this prompt - set in North America. It takes place in Illinois.
I might move it around later, but right now I think that this prompt makes the most sense for my challenge.

The story was published in 2024 by Amazon Original Stories.

>2 MissBrangwen: Me too! I've done the similar. I've started my 2026 reading year on Christmas Day.

Completed prompt / 🎉
"set in North America" read January 9

"Friday Black" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 2018. 4 stars

This is a tough story to read. Too close to home. Cruel. And weirdly humorous. Apt on both counts, but shocking.

It's a somewhat futuristic look at the Black Friday insanity, thankfully most of the cruelty we used to see by maniacal American shoppers is now dulled by shopping online. I'd read more Adjei-Brenyah, but I don't think I'd re-read this story any time soon.

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Read with The Brown County Reading Society Goodreads group, which is hilariously not as stuffy as it is purposely intended to sound. The moderator provided the text for us.
My full 26Shorts2026 log is here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/376315

Completed prompt / 🎉

                                                      ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 4+1 stories by Flannery O'Connor, listed ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗
                                                                   ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗 5th Mar 2026, 4* ✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗✔️📗

I say +1 because after reading the first story The Life You Save Maybe Your Own I wanted to read more of her work moving that story with another 4 to complete this prompt.

Nothing is quite as it seems in these stories, these stories are dark, the characters are not very likable, what stands out is how the story unfolds. In Good Country People an educated smart daughter despises her mother only to learn a harsh lesson herself, same happens in Everything that Rises Must Converge but this time the conflict is between mother and son. The conflict in all of them is a clash of ideals driven by a longing for the old Antebellum South that is vanishing from the new world.

Other stories read:
Revelation
A Good Man is Hard to Find
A Late Encounter with the Enemy by Flannery O’Connor

My ShortRead log tracks my challenge. So far I've completed 7 prompts, I'm going for 32 and aiming to complete 3 prompts per month.
My experience so far is covered in my journal.

Completed Prompt
North America
"The Pride of the Corbyns" by Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks. This story, published in 1882, is set on a sugar plantation in Barbados. The themes that propel the horror in the story are racial purity and greed. Obviously, the story is very much of "its time" in the way that it portrays slavery and individual black characters. However, with that caveat, I would liked to note that even though the slaves align with the typical stereotypes, they are not portrayed as stupid or villians. The people who are stupid and villainous are the biracial family who try to take over the plantation. In presuming that they have certain rights, they provoke the wrath of the dead Corbyns, who will fight against "mixing," even if it occurs in a crypt. I enjoyed the story because it gave me a lot to think about in relation to the past and the present.

🎉 Set in North America:

"Battle Royal" (1947) by Ralph Ellison, The American South is the backdrop of this true-to-its-name example of the literary genre, battle royal. The first chapter of Ralph Ellison's seminal novel Invisible Man was first published as a stand-alone short story and hinted at the battles, both internal and external, destined to shape the narrator's character. Even after all these years, the level of dehumanization is shocking and hard to believe.
Collection: The River Reader
Completed: January 3, 2026