elliott holt

Listed in no particular order. I forced myself to choose only one story per writer (very difficult in some cases). There is a lot of amazing short fiction out there, but these are stories—of various styles—that have stuck with me over the years and have taught me what a story can be. I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of gems.

1. “Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. “Berenice” by Edgar Allan Poe
3. “The Lady with the Lap Dog” by Chekhov
4. “The Overcoat” by Gogol
5. “The Necklace” by Guy Maupassant
6. “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka
7. “The Dead” by James Joyce
8. “The Secret Life of Walter Middy” by James Thurber
9. “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner
10. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
11. “The Snows of Kilamanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway
12. “Friend of My Youth” by Alice Munro
13. “When We Were Nearly Young” by Mavis Gallant
14. “Work” by Denis Johnson
15. “Wants” by Grace Paley
16. “The Swimmer” by John Cheever
17. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
18. “Hitch-Hikers” by Eudora Welty
19. “The Laughing Man” by J.D. Salinger
20. “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver
21. “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel
22. “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
23. “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” by William Gass
24. “After Rain” by William Trevor
25. “White Angel” by Michael Cunningham
26. “Girl” by Jamaica Kinkaid
27. “A Rich Man” by Edward P. Jones
28. “Do Not Disturb” by A.M. Homes
29. “Twenty Minutes” by James Salter
30. “Happy Memories” by Lydia Davis
31. “Screenwriter” by Charles D’Ambrosio
32. “Memory Wall” by Anthony Doerr
33. “L. Debard and Aliette” by Lauren Groff
34. “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff
35. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
36. “Boys Town” by Jim Shepard
37. “The Fat Girl” by Andre Dubus
38. “Pastoralia” by George Saunders
39. “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” by Wells Tower
40. “Men Under Water” by Ralph Lombreglia
41. “All the Way in Flagstaff, Arizona” by Richard Bausch
42. “Brownies” by Z.Z. Packer
43. “Hell-Heaven” by Jhumpa Lahiri
44. “Sindbad” by Donald Barthelme
45. “I Used to Live Here Once” by Jean Rhys
46. “The Girl Detective” by Kelly Link
47. “Sororally” by Gary Lutz
48. “Train” by Joy Williams
49. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell
50. “The Magic Poker” by Robert Coover
51. “Lady” by Diane Williams
52. “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le
53. “Natasha” by David Bezmozgis
54. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
55. “A Spoiled Man” by Daniyal Mueenuddin
56. “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford
57. “The Custodian” by Deborah Eisenberg
58. “In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark
59. “You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore
60. “A Romantic Weekend” by Mary Gaitskill
61. “Blessed Assurance” by Allan Gurganus
62. “The Half-Skinned Steer” by Annie Proulx
63. “Drown” by Junot Diaz
64. “Immortality” by Yiyun Li
65. “Sun City” by Caitlin Horrocks
66. “None of the Above” by Suzanne Rivecca
67. “Virgins” by Danielle Evans
68. “Safari” by Jennifer Egan
69. “Testimony of Pilot” by Barry Hannah
70. “These Hands” by Kevin Brockmeier