ESSAY | LITERATURE | SHORT FICTION
For the Love of Short Stories
It began with Edgar Allan Poe
My friend, mentor and a favorite writer, Melissa Coffey recently wrote an excellent essay on her love of short stories and she has encouraged me to write about my own love of short stories and to list some of my favorite short story writers.
My life centers around two things — writing and reading. Nothing else captures my attention for long. I have been a prolific reader since early childhood and short stories have been a major part of that experience. I was around ten when an English teacher discovered my love of writing short stories. She kept a box of index cards on her desk and when I’d completed my classwork for the day, she would allow me to take an index card with a story idea on it and write a story. She also gave me my first book of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve been in love with this writing form ever since.
I love a well put together story with compelling characters, a riveting plot and a great twist. Sure, you can find these in novels, but it takes a great storyteller to do this in short form.
Over the years, I have purchased anthologies of stories in the Science Fiction, Horror and Mystery genres, but I also collect individual writers’ work. These are the authors that currently occupy my bookshelves and I have one or more of their short story collections (forgive me, this is a long list and in no particular order of preference):
Virginia Woolf Stephen King Margaret Atwood Gabriel Garcia Marquez Neil Gaiman Anton Chekhov Edgar Allan Poe Franz Kafka Ray Bradbury Oscar Wilde James Joyce Roald Dahl Kurt Vonnegut Shirley Jackson D. H. Lawrence Agatha Christie Charles Bukowski Philip K Dick Alice Munro Isaac Asimov Henry James Carson McCullers Dorothy Parker Willa Cather Ursula K. Le Guin Daphne du Maurier Joyce Carol Oates Robert A. Heinlein Kate Chopin Zora Neale Hurston Lorrie Moore Langston Hughes Andrei Platonov| Krys Lee Flannery O’Connor Nikolai Gogol Jorge Luis Borges Katherine Mansfield Isaac Babel John Cheever Ben Bova Ernest Hemmingway Nathaniel Hawthorne
You can probably tell that I love a variety of storytelling, from classics to more modern. My two absolute favorites are Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. Krys Lee is a relatively recent discovery. Stephen King is just a favorite writer, so I own everything he has ever published.
As I said, I also own anthologies. Each year, I purchase anthologies of short story writers from all over the world and in various genres. If I find a new writer that I enjoy, I begin collecting all of their work. I’ve been doing this since 1995, so you can imagine how full my shelves are (I do this with favorite poets too!). I am a firm believer that if you want to be a good writer, you have to be a reader as well.
Here on Medium, I have discovered some amazing short story writers too. Here are just a few of them — Matthew Donnellon, Anna Breslin, J.A. Taylor, Mary Keating, Dan Leicht, Bradley J Nordell, Bill Adler, Rod Castor, Jessica Lee McMillan, Louise Foerster, Galit Birk, PhD, Bill DuBay Jr., Tina L. Smith, and Terrye Turpin and so many more! This list could go on for eternity!
I hope you’ve enjoyed a peek into some of my favorite short fiction writers. Perhaps in the future, I will write some essays on individual authors who have inspired me over the years.
© 2020 Lori Carlson. All Rights Reserved.
Melissa Coffey’s essay
Lori Carlson writes Poetry, Fiction, Articles, Creative Non-Fiction and Personal Essays. Most of her topics are centered around Relationships, Spirituality, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Nature, Loss, Death, and the LGBTQ+ community. Check out her personal Medium blog here.
