Fiction Anthologies of Short Stories Every Writer Should Read
As a reader and writer who is looking to widen her horizons when it comes to literature, I cannot praise anthologies enough. Anthologies deserve so much more attention than they receive. They collect stories, poems, and essays by different writers (often writers who are underrepresented or not very well known, but nonetheless important) allowing their readers to experience a great range of voices united together to explore common themes. If you want to try something new and find out more about particular genres, modes, or styles of writing, and don’t know where to start, turning to anthologies will help you discover new work and, most likely, new favourite writers to enjoy and be inspired by.
Thanks to the anthologies I’ve read in the past few years, I’ve discovered a great deal of fascinating writers, classic and contemporary, that I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, and their work has had a powerful impact on my own writing craft—I dare say more than anything else. Here are some of my favourite anthologies of short stories that I think deserve more recognition.
An Invite to Eternity – Tales of Nature Disrupted (2019) edited by Gary Budden and Marian Womack
Although it’s not always the case or a rule that needs to be followed, I think the best fiction I’ve read feels like an ode, a reminder, or a warning about something in the real world, and that’s one of the reasons certain stories will probably stay with me forever. This is an extraordinary collection of speculative short fiction, ‘dealing with the climate crisis, dealing with the realities of life lived in a world that has bent out of shape and is beginning to elude our understanding,’ as Gary Budden, one of the editors, puts it. The writers in An Invite to Eternity address and articulate issues on climate change and global warming through wonderful language and imagery, and imaginative speculative fiction conceits, in an attempt to bring awareness and to open conversations.
Uncertainties Volume IV (2020) edited by Timothy J. Jarvis
This is the fourth volume of the Uncertainties series published by Swan River Press, an independent publisher based in Ireland, specialising in Gothic, supernatural, and fantastical literature. In this splendid edition, Timothy J. Jarvis has grouped together some fantastic stories from contemporary writers of speculative fiction. These stories deal with ghosts, some in the conventional sense, others in the forms of suppressed thoughts and memories, and with the occult, but not necessarily in a traditional way. The authors in this volume leave their readers with powerful messages, beautiful yet disturbing landscapes, and, as the title proudly suggests, a state of Gothic uncertainty.
The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories (1996) edited by Michael Cox
I don’t tend to read a lot of horror, mostly because in many stories of this genre the ending, which frequently resolves the mysteries of the tale, ruins the mood for me (though there are exceptions). This collection does nothing like that—these stories work so well as ghost tales, they made me question reality. I still remember the night I read ‘Mrs Porter and Miss Allen’ by Hugh Walpole; how I was home alone, and the heavy rain sounded as if someone was knocking at my window, and every shadow in the house felt like an otherworldly presence...
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2011) edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
If you’re interested in reading fantastical stories that play with the boundaries between reality and the supernatural and don’t know where to start, this is the most definitive collection of weird tales you are likely to read, and perhaps the most influential of recent times. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer selected for this mammoth 1,111-page volume, 110 short stories, novellas, and short novels from around a hundred writers of over twenty nationalities. Expect to find a vast range of weird fiction in this anthology, from classic, conventional, and speculative, to stories influenced by Surrealism, the Gothic, and the Decadent movement.
Sudden Fiction International: Sixty Short-short Stories edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
I’m a great admirer of flash fiction stories and I return to this book every time I need inspiration for my own very short fiction. This collection offers a great chance to discover and appreciate the beauty of short-short stories, and it contains a diverse variety of writers, from South Africa, China, Mexico, Taiwan, India, United States, England, Italy, France, Poland, Japan, and many other places.
Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction edited by Philip Stevick
Studying this book at university taught me invaluable lessons about experimental fiction and offered me excellent models for playing with literary conventions. It contains stories that are not exactly stories, but reflections, thoughts, dreams, and memoirs. This anthology challenges our expectations of what fiction can be and do. My favourite piece from it is ‘motherlogue’ by Ann Quin, which is a six page phone monologue of a mother talking to her daughter—a strong example of what experimental writing can convey.
