Introduction and discussion of the short story
Week 1
Saunders, George. “Sticks.” In Tenth of December: Stories, 2014.
Very Short Stories: Course Packet
Week 2
Phillips, Helen. “The Knowers.” In Some Possible Solutions: Stories. New York: Pushkin Press, 2017.
Doerr, Anthony. “The Deep.” In Memory Wall: Stories. Scribner: New York, NY, 2010.
Atwood, Margaret. “Happy Endings.” In Good Bones and Simple Murders. Toronto: M&S, 2001.
Chopin, Kate, and Barbara H Solomon. “The Story of an Hour.” In The Awakening, and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin. New York: New American Library, 2012 (1976).
Paley, Grace. “A Conversation with My Father.” In Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000.
Week 3
Tolstoy, Leo, trans. Louise Maude, and Aylmer Maude. The Death of Ivan Ilych, (1886) 2015.
Tolstaya, Tatyana. “Aspic.” The New Yorker, January 17, 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/aspic-fiction-tatyana-tolstaya.
Davis, Lydia. “Pouchet’s Wife.” In Can’t and Won’t, 2015.
Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” In Contemporary Fiction: 50 Short Stories since 1970, edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone. New York: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster, 1974. (2004)
Originally published:
Barthelme, Donald. “The School.” The New Yorker, June 9, 1974. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1974/06/17/the-school.
Davis, Lydia, Letter to a Funeral Parlor
White, Rebecca White. “Letter to a Funeral Parlor Client.” Typishly, October 6, 2019.
Week 4
O'Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” In The Things They Carried. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
Erdich, Louise. “The Red Convertible.” In Love Medicine. London: Flamingo, 1994.
Sayrafiezadeh, Saïd. “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy.” In The New Yorker: Jan. 8 2012. Also: Brief Encounters with the Enemy Fiction. New York: The Dial Press, 2013.
Blasim, Hassan. “The Green Zone Rabbit.” Translated by Jonathan Wright. Words Without Borders, April 2013.
Berlin, Lucia. “My Jockey.” In A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, edited by Stephen Emerson and Lydia Davis, 2016.
Week 5
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills like White Elephants.” Transition., no. 5 (1927).
Wallace, David Foster. “Everything Is Green.” In Girl with Curious Hair: Stories. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Banks, Russell. “Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat.”
Englander, Nathan. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank.” In What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank. London: Phoenix, 2013.
Carver, Raymond. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” In What We Talk about When We Talk about Love: Stories, 2015.
Valenzuela, Luisa. “Vision out of the Corner of One Eye.” In The Censors, 1992.
Week 6
In Kafka Online. also: Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis: By Franz Kafka. NY: Bantam Books, 1915.
García Márquez, Gabriel. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings ; and, the Sea of Lost Time, 2014.
Originally: Lispector, Clarice. “The Smallest Woman in the World.” In Family Ties. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
Bradbury, Ray. “‘August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains.’” In The Martian Chronicles. Bantam Books, 1979.
Butler, Octavia. “Speech Sounds.” In Tales from Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine: Short Stories for Young Adults. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
Week 7
Lawrence, D. H. “The Rocking Horse Winner.” In The Rocking Horse Winner. London, 1949.
Cheever, John. “‘The Swimmer,.” The New Yorker, July 10, 1964. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/07/18/the-swimmer.
July, Miranda. “The Swim Team.” In No One Belongs Here More than You., 2015.
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” In Cathedral, 2016.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” In Three by Flannery O’Connor: Wise Blood, the Violent Bear It Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1997.
Week 8
Saunders, George. “PUPPY.” The New Yorker, May 20, 2007. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/28/puppy-2.
Saunders, George. “Escape from Spiderhead.” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/escape-from-spiderhead.
Saunders, George. “Victory Lap.” The New Yorker, October 5, 2009. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/05/victory-lap.
Week 9
Joyce, James. “3. Araby. Dubliners.: Project Gutenberg, 1895.
Joyce, James. “11. A Painful Case.” In Dubliners: Project Gutenberg, 1895.
Joyce, James. “ 15. The Dead.” In Dubliners: Project Gutenberg, 1895.
Munro, Alice. “‘Passion.’” The New Yorker, March 14, 2004. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/03/22/passion-8.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where are you going, where have you been?” In Where are you going, where have you been?, edited by Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1994.
Week 10
Chekhov, Anton. “The Darling.” In The Darling and Other Stories: The Tales of Chekov, Vol. I. The Project Gutenberg E-Text. Accessed August 4, 2021. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13416/13416-h/13416-h.htm#darling.
Chopin, Kate. “Desiree's Baby.” In The Awakening, and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin, edited by Barbara H Solomon. New York: New American Library, 2012.
Cisneros, Sandra. “Barbie Q.” In Woman Hollering Creek. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004.
Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl.” The New Yorker, June 18, 1978. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/06/26/girl.
Mason, Bobbie Ann. “Shiloh.” In Patchwork: A Bobbie Ann Mason Reader, 2018.
Gray, Amelia. “The Swan as Metaphor for Love.” Electric Literature, July 8, 2015. https://electricliterature.com/the-swan-as-metaphor-for-love-amelia-gray/.
Week 11
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” In Going to Meet the Man, 1995. http://ebook.3m.com/library/BCPL-document_id-c6tag89.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Sweat.” Edited by Wallace Thurman, Bruce Nugent, and Thomas H Wirth. Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, 1926.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Harper’s Magazine, April 1, 1973. https://harpers.org/archive/1973/04/everyday-use/.
Packer, ZZ. “Brownies.” In Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2018.
Smith, Zadie. “‘Crazy They Call Me.’” The New Yorker, February 26, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/crazy-they-call-me.
Week 12
with David Zane Mairowitz
Persepolis
Bechdel, Alison. “A Pretty Good Day’s Work.”
Bechdel, Alison. “A Pretty Good Day’s Work.” The New Yorker, October 2, 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/a-pretty-good-days-work.
Barry, Lynda. “Lynda Barry’s ‘Two Questions.’” The Great Comic Book Heroes (blog), December 18, 2013. http://thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2013/12/lynda-barrys-two-questions.html.
Kafka, Franz. “A Hunger Artist.” Kafka Online (blog). Accessed August 4, 2021. https://www.kafka-online.info/a-hunger-artist.html.
Week 13
Diaz, Junot. “Alma.” The New Yorker, December 16, 2007. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/24/alma.
Diaz, Junot. “The Pura Principle.” The New Yorker, March 14, 2010. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/22/the-pura-principle.
Diaz, Junot. “Miss Lora.” The New Yorker, April 15, 2012. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/miss-lora.
Junot Diaz. “The Cheater’s Guide to Love.” The New Yorker, July 22, 2012. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/the-cheaters-guide-to-love.
Anderson, Sherwood. “Hands.” In Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories, 9–14. Library of America, 2012.
Week 14
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Unaccustomed Earth.” In Unaccustomed Earth. Haryana (India): Vintage, 2015.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Hell-Heaven.” The New Yorker, May 16, 2004. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/24/hell-heaven.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Once in a Lifetime.” The New Yorker, April 30, 2006. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/05/08/once-in-a-lifetime.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “‘Year’s End.’” The New Yorker, December 16, 2007. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/24/years-end.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Going Ashore.” In Unaccustomed Earth. Haryana (India): Vintage, 2015.
