The short story is one of America’s most distinctive literary forms. While it draws on older European folktales and sketches, the short story found its brisk pace, psychological depth, and democratic reach on American soil—tuned to our cities and plains, our migrations and arrivals, our speech and silences. This guide traces the form’s evolution from the nineteenth century to the present, pairing key authors with brief example lines (fair use) and suggesting famous stories and collections to explore.
Three traits recur across eras: compression, voice, and place. American stories tend to arrive quickly, speak distinctly, and stand somewhere—New England woods, Harlem streets, Midwestern kitchens, Southwestern deserts. They carry the timbre of a nation in motion and the stubborn textures of the local. As Vine Deloria reminds us, identity is lived on the ground; American short fiction absorbs that ground and gives it back as character, conflict, and image.
Edgar Allan Poe refined the short story into a concentrated art of effect. His pieces pursue a single emotional trajectory—terror, dread, obsession—making every sentence serve that aim.
“I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.” — The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
What to read: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne explored moral ambiguity through allegory and atmosphere, rooting his work in New England’s history and forests.
“Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset.” — Young Goodman Brown (1835)
What to read: “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Birth-Mark,” Twice-Told Tales (collection).
Herman Melville gave the form philosophical weight and office-era realism long before it was fashionable.
“I would prefer not to.” — Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853)
What to read: “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” “Benito Cereno.”
After the Civil War, American short fiction broadened into regional realism—capturing dialect, custom, and local ironies.
Mark Twain fused frontier humor with sharp observation.
“Smiley had a mare which he called the fifteen-minute nag.” — “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865)
What to read: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
Kate Chopin rendered women’s inner lives in Louisiana’s parishes.
“She was a little faint and dizzy.” — “The Story of an Hour” (1894)
What to read: “The Story of an Hour,” pieces from Bayou Folk.
Charles W. Chesnutt innovated with frame tales that braid folklore and Reconstruction-era realities.
“Dat’s a mighty strange tale, suh.” — “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887)
What to read: “The Goophered Grapevine,” The Wife of His Youth.
Sarah Orne Jewett distilled quiet strength and community in coastal Maine.
“It was noon by the sun.” — “A White Heron” (1886)
What to read: “A White Heron.”
Modernists pared language, fractured chronology, and surveyed the psyche. Magazines—the engines of short fiction—amplified their voices.
Sherwood Anderson shaped the “linked collection,” giving a whole town a chorus of lonely, luminous voices.
“In the darkness he could not see the hands.” — “Hands” (1919)
What to read: Winesburg, Ohio (cycle); “Hands,” “Adventure.”
Ernest Hemingway perfected restraint—meaning emerges in the white space.
“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” — “Hills Like White Elephants” (1927)
What to read: “Hills Like White Elephants,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” In Our Time.
Zora Neale Hurston brought the cadences of Black Southern speech into vibrant, modern narratives.
“You better quit dat talkin’.” — “Sweat” (1926)
What to read: “Sweat,” “The Gilded Six-Bits.”
William Faulkner expanded the short story into mythic time—same counties, different centuries.
“They’re going to kill her.” — “A Rose for Emily” (1930)
What to read: “A Rose for Emily,” “Barn Burning,” Go Down, Moses (linked stories).
After the war, American stories interrogated grace, race, suburban aspiration, and the stubbornness of fate.
Flannery O’Connor revealed violent epiphanies in the Southern grotesque.
“She would of been a good woman.” — “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953)
What to read: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” “Good Country People.”
James Baldwin braided music, memory, and moral clarity.
“I read about it in the paper.” — “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)
What to read: “Sonny’s Blues,” “Going to Meet the Man.”
John Cheever mapped suburban desire and disillusion with elegant unease.
“It was one of those midsummer Sundays.” — “The Swimmer” (1964)
What to read: “The Swimmer,” “The Enormous Radio,” The Stories of John Cheever.
Eudora Welty attended closely to community and perception.
“It was December; the month of the cleared garden.” — “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941)
What to read: “Why I Live at the P.O.,” “A Worn Path.”
Raymond Carver wrote about working-class rooms, unpaid bills, and the strange dignity of getting by. His sentences are clean until they suddenly aren’t.
“We were in bed, asleep.” — “Why Don’t You Dance?” (1976)
What to read: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, “Cathedral,” “Neighbors.”
Toni Cade Bambara brought quick wit and kinetic dialogue to urban Black childhoods and communities.
“Miss Moore is with us.” — “The Lesson” (1972)
What to read: “The Lesson,” stories from Gorilla, My Love.
Joyce Carol Oates ranges from psychological realism to American gothic, often revealing peril at the edge of ordinary life.
“Her name was Connie.” — “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966)
What to read: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” “Heat.”
Jhumpa Lahiri writes with exactness about immigration, marriage, and distance—literal and felt.
“Mrs. Sen’s hair is longer than mine.” — “Mrs. Sen’s” (1999)
What to read: Interpreter of Maladies (Pulitzer), “A Temporary Matter.”
Junot Díaz mixes streetwise swagger with tender memory, code-switching between English and Spanish to capture Dominican-American adolescence.
“The kids kept trying to jump me.” — “Fiesta, 1980” (1996)
What to read: Drown, “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie.”
George Saunders blends satire with mercy, giving corporate America and everyday kindness an odd, luminous dignity.
“A haircut cost eight dollars.” — “Puppy” (2007)
What to read: Tenth of December, “Sticks,” “Escape from Spiderhead.”
Carmen Maria Machado reimagines horror and desire, turning familiar myths and TV tropes into uncanny mirrors.
“The husband stitches.” — “The Husband Stitch” (2014)
What to read: Her Body and Other Parties, “Inventory.”
Natasha Trethewey (better known for poetry) crafts short prose that traces memory, race, and Gulf Coast place with quiet force.
“The water kept its secrets.” — short prose excerpt
What to read: Short prose in essays/memoir; pair with poets writing story-like sequences.
ZZ Packer brings humor and moral clarity to coming-of-age and faith.
“The Lord fights my battles.” — “Brownies” (2003)
What to read: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, “Brownies.”
The form is elastic. It can be a five-page shock or a forty-page immersion. It thrives in classrooms, magazines, anthologies, and—now—digital platforms. For writers, it’s a laboratory. For readers living busy lives, it’s a perfectly scaled art: you can meet a character, feel a life, and leave changed on a lunch break. Most importantly, American stories keep returning to place: New England gloom, Louisiana heat, Bronx stoops, Oakland warehouses, Arizona borderlands—soil that shapes sentence and fate.
If you want a compact tour of the tradition and its living edges, this reading path balances eras, geographies, and styles. Anthologies are listed first for breadth, then single-author highlights.
The short story continues to renew itself because America continues to change. New voices arrive, new media publish, and the old problems—love, class, race, hope—persist in fresh settings. From Salem village to Sharp, Louisiana; from Harlem to Silicon Valley office parks; from immigrant kitchens to empty swimming pools, the American short story keeps record of life as it is actually lived here. Compact, portable, and deeply local, it remains the nation’s most agile narrative form.
Have a favorite American short story we missed? Share it with us—Westbrae Literary Group is building a living map of stories shaped by the places we call home.