Introduction: Story and its writer -- Stories: Civil peace / Chinua Achebe -- Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven / Sherman Alexie -- Act of vengeance / Isabel Allende -- Hands / Sherwood Anderson -- Happy endings / Margaret Atwood -- Sonny's blues / James Baldwin -- Lesson / Toni Cade Bambara -- Black man and white woman in dark green boat / Russell Banks -- Snow / Ann Beattie -- From Fun Home: Old father, old artificer / Alison Bechdel -- The rememberer / Aimee Bender -- Occurrence at Owl Creek bridge / Ambrose Bierce -- Circular ruins / Jorge Luis Borges -- August 2026: There will come soft rains / Ray Bradbury -- Cathedral; A small, good thing ; What we talk about when we talk about love / Raymond Carver -- Paul's case / Willa Carter -- Water names / Lan Samantha Chang -- Swimmer / John Cheever -- Darling / Anton Chekhov -- Deśireé́'s baby; Story of an hour / Kate Chopin -- Barbie-Q / Sandra Cisneros -- Heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad -- Open boat / Stephen Crane -- How to date a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie / Junot Diaz -- Battle royal / Ralph Ellison -- The red convertible / Louise Erdrich -- Rose for Emily; That evening sun / William Faulkner -- Very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- Yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Homage / Nadine Gordimer -- Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Hills like white elephants / Ernest Hemingway -- Church cancels cow / Amy Hempel -- Things you should know / A. M. Homes -- Sweat / Zora Neale Hurston -- Lottery / Shirley Jackson -- Who's Irish? / Gish Jen -- White heron / Sarah Orne Jewett -- Bad neighbors / Edward P. Jones -- Araby; Dead / James Joyce -- Hunger Artist; Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid -- Interpreter of maladies / Jhumpa Lahiri -- Rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence -- Miss Brill / Katherine Mansfield -- Shiloh / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Necklace / Guy de Maupassant -- Bartleby, the scrivener / Herman Melville -- Nawabdin electrician / Daniyal Mueenuddin -- Management of grief / Bharati Mukherjee -- Dance of the happy shades / Alice Munro -- Where are you going, where you have been? / Joyce Carol Oates -- Things they carried / Tim O'Brien -- Everything that rises must converge; Good country people; Good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor -- I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen -- The shawl / Cynthia Ozick -- Brownies / ZZ Packer -- Conversation with my father / Grace Paley -- Cask of Amontillado; Tell-tale heart / Edgar Allan Poe -- The jilting of Granny Weatherall / Katherine Anne Porter -- Job history / Annie Proulx -- From Palestine: Refugeeland / Joe Sacco -- From Persepolis : The veil / Marjane Satrapi -- Yellow woman / Leslie Marmon Silko -- Homework / Helen Simpson -- Prisoner on the hell planet: a case history / Art Spiegelman -- Two kinds / Amy Tan -- Death of Ivan Ilych / Leo Tolstoy -- A&P / John Updike -- The moths / Helena Maria Viramontes -- Harrison Bergeron / Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -- Everyday use / Alice Walker -- Good people / David Foster Wallace -- Worn path / Eudora Welty -- Say yes / Tobias Wolf -- Man who was almost a man / Richard Wright -- Commentaries: Image of Africa: Conrad's ''Heart of darkness'' / Chinua Achebe -- Superman and me / Sherman Alexie -- Form, not plot, in the short story / Sherwood Anderson -- Reading blind / Margaret Atwood -- Autobiographical notes / James Baldwin -- Writing "Poes" / Russell Banks -- Borges and I / Jorge Luis Borges -- Translating Kafka / Ann Charters -- Why I write short stories / John Cheever -- Technique in writing the short story / Anton Chekhov -- How I stumbled upon Maupassant / Kate Chopin -- Sinking of the commodore / Stephen Crane -- A huger artist / R. Crumb; David Zane Mairowitz -- Influence of folklore on ''Battle royal'' / Ralph Ellison -- Meaning of ''Rose for Emily'' / William Faulkner -- Feminist reading of Gilman's ''Yellow wallpaper'' / Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar -- Why I wrote ''Yellow wallpaper''; Undergoing the cure for nervous prostration / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- How it feels to be colored me / Zora Neale Hurston -- Morning of June 28,1948 and ''Lottery'' / Shirley Jackson -- On ''Girl'' / Jamaica Kincaid -- Finding your voice / Anne Lamott -- On Tim O'Brien's ''Things they carried'' / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Writer's goal / Guy de Maupassant -- Blackness in Hawthorne's ''Young Goodman Brown'' / Herman Melville -- How I write short stories / Alice Munro -- Stories that define me: Making of a writer; Smooth talk: Short story into film / Joyce Carol Oates -- Alpha company / Tim O'Brien -- Conversation with Ann Charters / Grace Paley -- Importance of the single effect in a prose tale / Edgar Allan Poe -- Language and literature from a Pueblo Indian perspective / Leslie Marmon Silko -- In the canon, for all the wrong reasons / Amy Tan -- Chekhov's intent in ''Darling'' / Leo Tolstoy -- Zora Neale Hurston: Cautionary tale and a partisan view / Alice Walker -- Some remarks on Kafka's funnieness from which probably not enough has been removed / David Foster Wallace -- Is Phoenix Jackson's grandson really dead? / Eudora Welty -- Reading fiction / Richard Wright -- Casebooks: Casebook one: Raymond Carver: One writing; Creative writing 101; The bath / Raymond Carver -- Origin of ''Cathedral'' / Tom Jenks -- Reading of ''What we talk about when we talk about love'' / Arthur M. Saltzman -- Looking for Raymond Carver / A.O. Scott -- Casebook two: Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies": My two lives / Jhumpa Lahiri -- Jhumpa Lahiri / Sean Flynn -- Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" / Simon Lewis -- Casebook three: Flannery O'Connor: From ''Letters 1954-55''; Writing short stories; Reasonable use of the unreasonable / Flannery O'Connor -- Rhetorical reading of O'Connor's ''Everything that rises must converge'' / Wayne C. Booth -- On ''Good country people'' / Dorothy Tuck McFarland -- Casebook four: Graphic storytelling: What the little old ladies feel / Alison Bechdel -- From "Alternative comics: toward the habit of questioning" / Charles Hatfield -- Are comics serious literature / Michael Kupperman -- From understanding comics: Invisible art / Scott McCloud -- Reading "The Veil" by Marjane Satrapi / Sydney Plum -- Some reflections on Palestine / Joe Sacco / Homage to Joe Sacco / Edward W. Said. Appendices: Reading short stories (Includes Grace Paley, ''Samuel'') -- Elements of fiction -- Brief history of the short story -- Writing about short stories -- Literary theory and critical perspectives -- Glossary of literary terms -- Chronological listing of authors' stories -- Chronological listing of authors and stories -- Index of authors and titles.

Includes bibliographical references and index.