Presents a collection of fifty-two short stories, covering a wide range of international authors and offering insight into the art of short story, including works by Chinua Achebe, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Yukio Mishima, Eudora Welty, among others.

"52 great authors, their best short fiction, and their insights on writing"--Cover.

Part I. Introduction. The art of the short story --Part II. Stories [authors A-J]. Dead men's path ; -- Author's perspective: Modern Africa as the crossroads of culture / Chinua Achebe -- Hands ; -- Author's perspective: Words not plot give form to a short story / Sherwood Anderson -- Happy endings ; -- Author's perspective: On the Canadian identity / Margaret Atwood -- Sonny's blues ; -- Author's perspective: Race and the African-American writer / James Baldwin -- The garden of forking paths ; -- Author's perspective: Literature as experience / Jorge Luis Borges -- The guest ; -- Author's perspective: Revolution and repression in Algeria / Albert Camus -- Cathedral ; -- A small, good thing ; -- Author's perspective: Commonplace but precise language / Raymond Carver -- Paul's case ; -- Author's perspective: Art as the process of simplification / Willa Cather -- The swimmer ; -- Author's perspective: Why I write short stories / John Cheever -- The lady with the pet dog ; -- Misery ; -- Author's perspective: Natural description and "The center of gravity" / Anton Chekhov -- The storm ; -- The story of an hour ; -- Author's perspective: My writing method / Kate Chopin -- Barbie-Q ; -- Author's perspective: Bilingual style / Sandra Cisneros -- The secret sharer ; -- Author's perspective: The condition of art / Joseph Conrad -- The open boat ; -- Author's perspective: The sinking of the Commodore / Stephen Crane -- A party down at the square ; -- Author's perspective: Race and fiction / Ralph Ellison -- Barn burning ; -- A rose for Emily ; -- Author's perspective: The human heart in conflict with itself / William Faulkner -- Babylon revisited ; -- Author's perspective: On his own literary aims / F. Scott Fitzgerald -- A simple heart ; -- Author's perspective: The labor of style / Gustave Flaubert -- A very old man with enormous wings ; -- Author's perspective: My beginnings as a writer / Gabriel García Marquez -- The yellow wallpaper ; -- Author's perspective: Why I wrote "The yellow wallpaper" / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- The overcoat ; -- Author's perspective: On realism / Nikolai Gogol -- A company of laughing faces ; -- Author's perspective: How the short story differs from the novel / Nadine Gordimer -- Young Goodman Brown ; -- The birthmark ; -- Author's perspective: On the public failure of his early stories / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- A clean, well-lighted place ; -- Author's perspective: One true sentence / Ernest Hemingway -- Sweat ; -- Author's perspective: Eatonville when you look at it / Zora Neale Hurston -- The lottery ; -- Author's perspective: The public reception of "The lottery" / Shirley Jackson -- The real thing ; -- Author's perspective: The mirror of a consciousness / Henry James -- Saboteur ; -- Author's perspective: Deciding to write in English / Ha Jin -- Araby ; -- The dead ; -- Author's perspective: Epiphanies / James Joyce. Part II[ Cont.]. Stories [authors K-W]. Before the law ; -- The metamorphosis ; -- Author's perspective: Discussing The metamorphosis / Franz Kafka -- Odour of Chrysanthemums ; -- The rocking-horse winner ; -- Author's perspective: The novel is the bright book of life / D.H. Lawrence -- The ones who walk away from Omelas ; -- Author's perspective: On "The ones who walk away from Omelas" / Ursula K. Le Guin -- A woman on a roof ; -- Author's perspective: My beginnings as a writer / Doris Lessing -- To build a fire ; -- Author's perspective: Defending the factuality of "To build a fire" / Jack London -- Miss Brill ; -- The garden-party ; -- Author's perspective: On "The garden-party" / Katherine Mansfield -- Shiloh ; -- Author's perspective: Minimalist fiction / Bobbie Ann Mason -- The necklace ; -- Author's perspective: The realist method / Guy de Maupassant -- Bartleby, the scrivener : a story of Wall-Street ; -- Author's perspective: American literature / Herman Melville -- Patriotism ; -- Author's perspective: Physical courage and death / Yukio Mishima -- How I met my husband ; -- Author's perspective: How I write short stories / Alice Munro -- Where are you going, where have you been? ; -- Author's perspective: Productivity and the critics / Joyce Carol Oates -- A good man is hard to find ; -- Revelation ; -- Author's perspective: The element of suspense in "A good man is hard to find" / Flannery O'Connor -- The fall of the House of Usher ; -- The Tell-tale heart ; -- Author's perspective: The tale and its effect / Edgar Allan Poe -- Flowering Judas ; -- Author's perspective: Writing "Flowering Judas" / Katherine Anne Porter -- The man to send rain clouds ; -- Author's perspective: The basis of "The man to send rain clouds" / Leslie Marmon Silko -- Gimpel the Fool ; -- Author's perspective: The character of Gimpel / Isaac Bashevis Singer -- The death of Ivan Ilych ; -- Author's perspective: The moral responsibility of art / Leo Tolstoy -- Separating ; -- Author's perspective: Why write? / John Updike -- Everyday use ; -- Author's perspective: The Black woman writer in America / Alice Walker -- Why I live at the P.O. ; -- Author's perspective: The plot of the short story / Eudora Welty -- Roman fever ; -- Author's perspective: The subject of short stories / Edith Wharton -- A haunted house ; -- Author's perspective: Women and fiction / Virginia Woolf. Part III. Writing. The elements of short fiction. Plot ; -- Characterization ; -- Point of view ; -- Setting ; -- Theme ; -- Style -- Writing about fiction -- Critical approaches to literature. Formalist criticism: Light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" / Michael Clark -- Biographical criticism: Chekhov's attitude to romantic love / Virginia Llewellyn Smith -- Historical criticism: The Argentine context of Borges's fantastic fiction / John King -- Psychological criticism: The father-figure in "The tell-tale heart" / Daniel Hoffman -- Mythological criticism: Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning" / Edmond Volpe -- "Sociological criticism: Money and labor in "The rocking-horse winner" / Daniel P. Watkins -- Gender criticism: Gender and pathology in "The yellow wallpaper" / Juliann Fleenor -- Reader-response criticism: An Eskimo "A Rose for Emily" / Stanley Fish -- Deconstructionist criticism: The death of the author / Roland Barthes -- Cultural studies: What is cultural studies? / Makr Bauerlein -- Part IV. Glossary of literary terms.