My own personal love of short stories cannot be untangled from my love of myths and fairy tales. Those were my first short stories, read to me by parents and grandparents. I still have those early-years short story collections in my modest library and I still read them—to me they will always be the books that showed me reading is rewarding and not that scary. (Except for my Faber Book of Favourite Fairy Tales that had creepy illustrations and which was kind of scary, but in the best possible way.)
Of course, fairy tales aren’t usually lumped in with short stories when we talk about fiction. My short story reading grew up a little bit and away from fairy tales thanks to high school (hi, JD Salinger’s Nine Stories) and university (oh hello, James Joyce’s Dubliners). I also tackled Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and Flannery O’Connor and Junot Diaz. And then I forgot about short stories for a bit and focused on novels and magazine articles and essays. Sigh. There is never enough time to read everything you want.
But the beginning of this year has brought a bunch of short story collections to my desk and I’m excited to read pretty much all of them. To be honest, they seem particularly appealing right now. It probably has something to do with how we—we being society—have come to appreciate brevity. Sure, a short story tends to be more than 280 characters, but they are typically, as the name suggests, short. Short stories fit our busy, over-scheduled on-the-go lives. They can be episodic in a way that those of us who enjoy the golden age of television (aka, now) can appreciate. Though, think more Black Mirror than Game of Thrones. Sometimes with all we’ve got going on, an episode is all we can handle, or commit to.
A portrait of a woman who loves short stories. Follow me for daily reads @AlxDonaldson
The snapshot that short stories offer, oftentimes starting in the middle of something and ending before that something is resolved, don’t promise closure—don’t even promise character development or even interesting plot points. Short stories just offer a glimpse, a peek into a story that you’ll never know all of. Perhaps it’s comforting to know that what you see is just a snapshot, that this too will give way to another episode or moment that is part of a much larger experience.
The truth of the matter is that short stories have probably never actually gone away, I’m just rediscovering my love for them thanks to a bunch of talented female writers who are killing the genre. There’s plenty covered in this crop of short stories—space travel and the far-off past and personal relationships and family obligation. There’s even a touch of the fairy-tale genre that had me fall in love with the imaginative but brief structure of the short story in the first place.
Here are 9 short story collections I can’t wait to read in 2018 that are all written by women:
Tiger, Tiger by Johanna Skibsrud
This collection includes 14 stories that cover Mars, taxidermy, teenage-dom and fake weddings. You might recognize author Johanna Skibsrud for her Scotiabank Giller prize-winning novel The Sentimentalists.
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Things Are Good Now by Djamila Ibrahim
Tackling the migrant experience, Ibrahim talks about race, displacement, religion and disillusionment in her collection of stories that though fiction, shed light on realities of moving across the world.
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The Doll’s Alphabet by Camilla Grudova
This collection promises to be childlike and grotesque, so obviously I’m sold on it. Toronto-based Grudova offers up a fantasy world not unlike a fairytale—just much, much darker.
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When We Were Birds by Maria Mutch
This one has fairytale written all over it—especially in the short story that retells an actual fairytale (Bluebeard). We also included this pick in our list of Canadian books written by women to read this year.
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Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
While tackling subjects like gun control and suicide, this collection from Thompson-Spires about black experiences also promises to be darkly funny.
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The Unreal and the Real by Ursula K. LeGuin
Though these stories aren’t new, they are definitely a must for anyone interested in fantasy and science fiction, from a revered author who recently passed away.
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The Vanishing Princess by Jenny Diski
Published posthumously, this collection of short stories that range from the magical to the mundane, but all are meaningful and poignant.
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That Tiny Life by Erin Frances Fisher
This detailed collection of short stories, tackles subjects you didn’t know you wanted to know about from deep in the past to positing about the future. We also included this pick in our list of Canadian books written by women to read this year.
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Honourable Mention: I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell – Okay so this is actually a memoir, but it may as well be a short story collection. The author is retelling, in an episodic way, all of her brushes with death. And because she’s such a talented writer, I had to keep reminding myself
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HAPPY READING!
xo
(Story by Contributing Editor, Alexandra Donaldson)