The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction

Collection contains: Stories: Civil peace / Chinua Achebe -- Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven / Sherman Alexie -- Act of vengeance / Isabel Allende -- Hands / Sherwood Anderson -- Happy endings / Margaret Atwood -- Sonny's blues / James Baldwin -- Lesson / Toni Cade Bambara -- Black man and white woman in dark green boat / Russell Banks -- Snow / Ann Beattie -- From Fun Home: Old father, old artificer / Alison Bechdel -- The rememberer / Aimee Bender -- [Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14863196W/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge) / Ambrose Bierce -- Circular ruins / Jorge Luis Borges -- August 2026: There will come soft rains / Ray Bradbury -- Cathedral; A small, good thing ; What we talk about when we talk about love / Raymond Carver -- Paul's case / Willa Carter -- Water names / Lan Samantha Chang -- Swimmer / John Cheever -- Darling / Anton Chekhov -- [Désiré́e's baby](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20078777W); [Story of an hour](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20078864W) / Kate Chopin -- Barbie-Q / Sandra Cisneros -- Heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad -- Open boat / Stephen Crane -- How to date a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie / Junot Diaz -- Battle royal / Ralph Ellison -- The red convertible / Louise Erdrich -- [Rose for Emily](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL82884W); [That evening sun](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20080863W) / William Faulkner -- Very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- Yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Homage / Nadine Gordimer -- [Young Goodman Brown](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL455569W) / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Hills like white elephants / Ernest Hemingway -- Church cancels cow / Amy Hempel -- Things you should know / A. M. Homes -- Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston -- Lottery / Shirley Jackson -- Who's Irish? / Gish Jen -- White heron / Sarah Orne Jewett -- Bad neighbors / Edward P. Jones -- [Araby](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20570121W); [Dead](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073437W) / James Joyce -- Hunger Artist; Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- Interpreter of maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri -- Rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence -- Miss Brill / Katherine Mansfield -- Shiloh / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- [Bartleby, the scrivener](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL102732W) / Herman Melville -- Nawabdin electrician / Daniyal Mueenuddin -- Management of grief / Bharati Mukherjee -- Dance of the happy shades / Alice Munro -- Where are you going, where you have been? / Joyce Carol Oates -- Things they carried / Tim O'Brien -- Everything that rises must converge; Good country people; Good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor -- I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen -- The shawl / Cynthia Ozick -- Brownies / ZZ Packer -- Conversation with my father / Grace Paley -- [Cask of Amontillado](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL41016W); [Tell-tale Heart](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL41059W)/ Edgar Allan Poe -- The jilting of Granny Weatherall / Katherine Anne Porter -- Job history / Annie Proulx -- From Palestine: Refugeeland / Joe Sacco -- From Persepolis : The veil / Marjane Satrapi -- Yellow woman / Leslie Marmon Silko -- Homework / Helen Simpson -- Prisoner on the hell planet: a case history / Art Spiegelman -- Two kinds / Amy Tan -- Death of Ivan Ilych / Leo Tolstoy -- A&P / John Updike -- The moths / Helena Maria Viramontes -- Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- Good people / David Foster Wallace -- Worn path / Eudora Welty -- Say yes / Tobias Wolf -- Man who was almost a man / Richard Wright -- Commentaries: Image of Africa: Conrad's ''Heart of darkness'' / Chinua Achebe -- Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- Form, not plot, in the short story / Sherwood Anderson -- Reading blind / Margaret Atwood -- Autobiographical notes / James Baldwin -- Writing "Poes"

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.