Several women writers have mastered the art of the short story. This Women's History Month wade into the world of short fiction authored by a female.
Her body and other parties : stories
Carmen Maria Machado
FICTION Machado Carmen
LGBTQ+, Short Story
Contains short stories about the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
The yellow wallpaper and other writings
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
FICTION Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Short Story, Literary Fiction
The classic story "the Yellow Wallpaper" will not only affect your home decorating decisions but provide unique insight into mental illness that can feel a bit too real.
- Frannie
A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Lucia Berlin
FICTION Berlin Lucia
Literary Fiction, Short Story
"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. The women of Berlin's stories are lost, but they are also strong, clever, and extraordinarily real. They are hitchhikers, hard workers, bad Christians. With the wit of Lorrie Moore and the grit of Raymond Carver, they navigate a world of jockeys, doctors, and switchboard operators. They laugh, they mourn, they drink. Berlin, a highly influential writer despite having published little in her lifetime, conjures these women from California, Mexico, and beyond. Lovers of the short story will not want to miss this remarkable collection from a master of the form"--
Taking you all over, Berlin's stories give reader's the perspective of characters often unseen on the page.
- Frannie
Dear life : stories
Alice Munro
FICTION Munro Alice
Literary Fiction, Short Story
Varied and beautiful, a collection of Alice Munro's stories is an essential to every bookshelf, but this entry in particular is from an artist at her peak.
- Frannie
Difficult women
Roxane Gay
FICTION Gay Roxane
Short Story, Literary Fiction
"Award-winning author and powerhouse talent Roxane Gay burst onto the scene with An Untamed State and the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial). Gay returns with Difficult Women, a collection of stories of rare force and beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls' fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July"--
Far from "Chick Lit" (no shade!), this short story collection of various female characters captures the spirit and struggle of every woman.
- Frannie
Machado has a unique ability to get inside your head with her writing and just creep you out. Genre blend of body horror and LGBTQIA+ literary fiction with lasting results
- Frannie