LSA Fall Reading List: Short Fiction Edition

The short story is a curious form, offering passage into an entire fictional world in the space of 20 pages or so. Reading a well-executed short story might feel like a jolt of magic, but its writing is constructed of demanding craft choices and mysterious gifts. This fall, consider spending some time with these celebrated collections of short fiction, all written by alumni of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program (HZWP).

‘Pemi Aguda (M.F.A. ’20)
Ghostroots, Norton, 2024
Aguda’s stories take place in Lagos, Nigeria, and explore themes of motherhood, infidelity, and rebellion with humor and hauntedness. This collection, her debut, was named a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award in Fiction.

Kristiana Kahakauwila (M.F.A. ’08)
This Is Paradise: Stories, Hogarth, 2013
Kahakauwila’s collection takes place in Hawai`i and centers the stories of women native to the islands. In an interview with the Bellingham Review, the author describes the world of the book: “The Hawai`i in This is Paradise is not the Hawai`i of brochures and travel magazines. Its beauty comes from the land and ocean, sure, but also from `ohana, the act of survival, commitment to one’s community, the way history echoes into the present. So I purposely wanted to take the reader’s expectations of this place and its culture and turn those expectations on their head.”

Rattawut Lapcharoensap (M.F.A. ’03)
Sightseeing, Grove, 2005
Published when he was only 25, Lapcharoensap’s debut collection won the Asian American Literary Award and was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, and the author was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007. The stories of Sightseeing feature the voices of characters living on the margins of Bangkok, many of them children working in the tourism industry. Lapcharoensap, who was born in Chicago and raised in Thailand, says in a 2013 interview with Granta: “Sometimes all a story needs is an interesting, clearly defined confusion.”

Danielle Lazarin (M.F.A. ’07)
Back Talk: Stories, Penguin Books, 2018
Lazarin’s collection of stories delves into the messiness of human relationships from the perspectives of women of all ages. Described in a starred Kirkus review: “Sensitive, intricate, and quietly powerful, Lazarin’s stories give voice to women learning to live on their own terms.”

Kristen Roupenian (M.F.A. ’17)
Cat Person and Other Stories, Gallery/Scout Press, 2020
The New Yorker’s publication of Roupenian’s short story “Cat Person” in 2017 resulted in an immediate, viral explosion of online conversation about the politics of dating and the short fiction form itself. The other stories in the eponymous 2020 collection are just as striking as “Cat Person”—which was adapted into a film in 2023—but exist in speculative, horror-tinged worlds reminiscent of the stories of Shirley Jackson or Carmen Maria Machado. Roupenian is currently the Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Fiction in HZWP.

Jess Row (M.F.A. ’01)
Nobody Ever Gets Lost, Five Chapters Books, 2011
Each of the seven stories in Row’s collection are touched in some way by the aftermath of September 11. Row explores betrayal, violence, and extremism in narratives that Charles Baxter praises for their “great intelligence attached to a depth of feeling that is really quite unusual in American writing.”

Ben Stroud (M.F.A. ’08)
Byzantium: Short Stories, Graywolf, 2013
“Where does history exist, except in our imagination? Does that make it any less true?” asks one of Stroud’s characters in Byzantium. The stories in this book are a collection of contemporary and ancient tales, scrambled and revised, across centuries and the globe. There’s even a catastrophic event on Lake Michigan involving a too-eager religious convert.

Inez Tan (M.F.A. ’15)
This Is Where I Won't Be Alone: Stories, Epigram Books, 2019
Tan’s collection, which takes place in locations as varied as Singapore, London, San Francisco, and the Moon, tackles themes of belonging, family, and home. Author Ning Cai writes that Tan’s “heartwarming authenticity will touch the heart of every Singaporean reader, no matter which corner of the world we currently reside in.”