July-September 2026: Anthologies and other short fiction

Welcome to Q3. Most of the readers here tend to gravitate towards longer forms so this time around we want to take some time to appreciate the short formats - from flash stories to novellas(*).

So what can you read?
- Any anthology: for example The Granta Book of African Short Stories or Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia (to name a few from my shelves) or any of the international anthologies in the Akashic Noir series (Haiti Noir for example). These can be specific to a country or a region or topic specific - whatever you feel like reading, as long as it is in scope, have fun.
- Any collection from an author who is in scope.
- Any magazine/journal (or part of) that is in scope. For example McSweeney's 46: Thirteen Crime Stories from Latin America

And if you do not want to commit to a full book? There are a lot of stories online:
- The fiction part of "Words without borders" ( https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/type/fiction/ ) is always a good resource (even though I still miss their old format of thematic issues every month). You can still browse by country: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/country/

Whatever you decide to read - happy reading!

(*)Different authorities and awards have different definitions of where novellas end and novels begin. The speculative world (in English) uses pure numbers - you are under 40K words, you are short fiction. Modern European novels outside of the field can be shorter and still considered novels. And in a lot of languages, it is about the complexity and not the length. For the purposes of our reading, we leave the door wide open - everyone can use whatever definition they decide to. As long as the author is in scope, have fun.

oh great a challenge i can get beind; ie, i have lots of them! I have the Granta book on my shelves so will star with that

I had a dig around on my shelves and couldn’t find much in the way of unread anthologies, so I may well be coming back to some I’ve looked at before. Anyway, I did find a couple — this is one I was lucky enough to spot in a thrift store a while back. I’m always on the lookout for books from this series: as many here will know, I have a soft spot for East German literature…

Hier und dort. Neulich vor langer Zeit: Erzählungen 1970-1990 (2000) edited by Günther Drommer (Germany, DDR, 1941-2020)

>3 thorold: Single author collections are also in scope (all short fiction is) :)

>4 AnnieMod: Yes, sorry — I knew that, didn’t express myself clearly :-)
But I don’t have many single-author short fiction collections on the pile either. An excuse for book-shopping…

Looking around in a local bookshop, I came across this recently-published anthology, which sounded as though it would be perfect for the theme, since it claims to present short fiction by living writers from all around the world. When you look at it more closely, a lot of them are writers teaching at US universities who lived somewhere dangerous and exotic as children (or know someone who did). But it’s a good start, and better than nothing…

The Penguin Book of the International Short Story (2026) edited by Rabih Alameddine (USA, Lebanon, 1959- ) and John Freeman (USA, 1974- )

Cool topic. As some here may recall, I like to read anthologies gradually, a story at a time, between the novels, memoirs, histories, etc. that I read straight through. I call them my "between books" and I generally have two stacks of them going, reading an entry from each book in one stack or the other, between my full length books. They're a mix of fiction and non-fiction books. Since I gather we're talking only about fiction in this thread (please correct me if I'm wrong), here are the topic-appropriate anthologies/collections I currently have going:

* Literature - Book Two edited by Thomas H. Briggs and others. This is an anthology of short stories, poetry and excerpts from longer works published in 1929 and meant for use in middle school and high school classes.
* New Writing from the Middle East edited by Leo Hamalian and John D. Yohannan. "New" means 1978, which is when this collection was published. Included are short stories, poems and short plays gathered into sections by country, including (I'm away from home and so from the book and so will forget some) Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Palestine and Armenia. I'm about 3/4 of the way through this one right now.
* Stay Out of New Orleans by P. Curran. Subtitled "Strange Stories," this is a collection of tales about the rougher side of pre-Katrina New Orleans. The stories center on street people, bartenders, drug dealers and and drug users and are rendered with empathy, but without holding back on the portrayal of the bleakness of most of the characters' lives. I lived in New Orleans through most of my 20s and during the time these stories take place. I never lived that sort of life, but I certainly came into contact with people who did.

The rest of my current "between books" are collections of essays and/or newspaper columns.

>7 rocketjk: Fiction only - yes - but if you read any stories in any book/magazine/online that fits, it is in scope as well as a separate story (even if the book is not). I suspect I will end up posting more about stories and not too much about complete books...

I found a single-author collection on my pile!

Heinrich Böll was one of the key German writers of the generation that came to prominence after the end of World War II. He is mostly known for stories and short novels. He won the 1972 Nobel Prize.

Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa... (1950; 1967; Traveler, if you come to Spa…) by Heinrich Böll (Germany, 1917-1985)