This Season Brings a Crop of Short Story Collections From Authors Known for Novels
The short story's "renaissance" is a trope that has been trotted out by booksellers and commentators throughout the 21st century, though in fact the genre's popularity has remained relatively steady. That said, this season brings a wave of writers who made their name as novelists putting out short-story collections, perhaps attracted to the literary form's innate opportunity for experimentation and specificity. Here are five writers mainly known for their novels who have this year slimmed down their long-form prose and embraced the short story. The author known for We Need to Talk About Kevin 2003  and for her controversial remarks about the racial politics of fiction  has written her first collection of short stories and novellas. The book probes the power dynamics that surround ownership, of both homes and possessions. Shriver brings the acerbic detail and mordant wit that define her novels to this rumination on the uniting forces of houses and humanity. Out April 24, This is the first collection of short fiction by the Cincinnati-born author of five novels, including Prep 2005, American Wife 2008 and Eligible 2016. In 10 stories, Sittenfeld explores gender, schadenfreude and Trump-era politics with sharp insight. Her characters are as relatable as the protagonists in her best sellers. Out April 24, The multilingual author, known for her novels The Last Samurai 2000 and Lightning Rods 2011, demonstrates her intellectual prowess in this thought-provoking debut collection. These 13 tales, which push the boundaries of fiction, center on misunderstood geniuses and manage to combine complex mathematical theories with razor-sharp wit  no easy achievement. Out May 29, This dark short-story collection is the second from the New Yorker who is best known for her novel Fates and Furies 2015, the ambitious dissection of a marriage over 24 years. In Florida, Groff sets her sights on the titular Sunshine State, where she boldly explores conflicts and connections between everything from humans and their natural surroundings to pleasure and pain. Out June 5, The author of the PEN/Faulkner Awardwinning novel Netherland 2008 returns his gaze to New York City in his first short-story collection. Through 11 tales, the Irish-Turkish author observes a range of hyperreal, painfully vulnerable characters, from a man who is desperate for someone to write his character reference to a husband who cowers upstairs as his wife confronts a potential intruder. Out June 12