Each semester I teach a dozen or so stories to my fiction classes. I always keep a few of my favorites, teach them again and again. But I throw a handful of new stories in each semester. It’s a strange struggle to find stories that I love and that I think will resonate with students. Sometimes, what I think will resonate, falls flat. And often, those stories that I think will be a tough sell, really hit home. I’ve been combing through some books looking for the right stuff. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
- “Going” by Amy Hempel
- “Boys” by Rick Moody
- “We Make Mud” by Peter Markus
- “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
- “Good for Your Soul” by Tim Gautreaux
- “Kansas” by Stephen Dobyns
- “North Country” by Roxanne Gay
- “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver
- “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” by Nathan Englander
- “Safari” by Jennifer Egan
- “The City in the Light of Moths” by Tim Horvath
- “Murke’s Collected Silences” by Heinrich Boll
- “The Last Speaker of the Language” by Carol Anshaw
- “Means of Suppressing Demonstrations” by Shani Boianjiu
- “Clear Over Target, the Whole Town in Flames” by Fiona Maazel
- “Hot Ice” by Stuart Dybek
Advertisements
Is there a flow? Do they connect, somehow? Is there a sort of meta arc or theme (not to plots but to styles, rhythms) ? Is this like a playlist? Are they designed to leave an impression as a whole unit?
Not necessarily. And I’m not 100% sure of the order. I pick stories I like and then try to focus conversation around their strengths–character, scene, etc. What usually happens is a theme develops in our conversation that connects the stories in unexpected ways.
i’m trying to teach a writing class how to write short stories through short stories. so to bring out characterization i used “a man who had no eyes” because the contrast is so strong… what stories would you recommend for dialogue, structure, more characterization??