Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Spain

That night we were having guests for dinner, and Ines had been in a frenzy all week. She hunted down innovative recipes on the internet and buried my desk in sheets of paper as she printed...

An Enchanting Evening

Margarita Leoz

11 min

Guatemala

On the silt and pebble-covered floor of the lagoon lay the body of a man. His open eyes seemed to be looking at the sun of a lower, liquid sky. A small black and yellow fish...

Still Water

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

8 min

Argentina

A moral romance The restaurant, which offered simple but excellent fare, was lit by a large artificial moon augmented by some weak recessed lighting in the walls. The owner oversaw proceedings from the till. At...

You Have to Pay

Marcelo Cohen

11 min

Argentina

The autumn felt more like summer than the summer had. I was wearing my blue silk dress, and I had the little Pekinese they’d given me for my birthday when I arrived at my boyfriend’s house....

The Voice

Silvina Ocampo

2 min

Uruguay

Alicia’s entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blonde, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband’s rough character. She loved...

The Feather Pillow

Horacio Quiroga

5 min

Venezuela

You walk, you walk and you forget: that’s what she always says. Well, not in those exact words. It’s usually a more specific complaint: you didn’t call Pacheco, you didn’t check the Supercable contract, you didn’t...

Benjamin and the Walker

Krina Ber

11 min

Colombia

Almost, almost there, but not quite. Something woke me up. A noise. I’m dripping wet, but I didn’t get there. I’m still half asleep. Nearly, but not quite. The wind is blowing through the coffee groves;...

Down the Path

Juan Cárdenas

9 min

Venezuela

How could Edgardo have hunted an animal if he didn’t even know how to love, much less kill. He’d become a useless idler, sitting all day in front of the television set or on the computer...

Silver Pistols

Liliana Lara

10 min

Mexico

When I was a little girl my mother had a fungus on one of her toenails. On her left pinkie toe to be exact. From the moment she discovered it she tried everything to get rid...

Fungus

Guadalupe Nettel

16 min

Argentina

Thursday, July 6 I’m sitting down to write because I finally have something to tell you. The boy from the newsstand didn’t bring me the paper today. I went to complain. On the way there...

Diary of a Newspaper Reader

Eduardo Berti

11 min

Spain

Miriam tells them that he built the house himself with his own hands. She tells them how he piled up the rocks on rainy days, so that they’d get good and soaked before he soldered them...

Second Residence

Margarita Leoz

10 min

Uruguay

My sister is going out with a guy who got famous for being on a reality show in the United States. She met him at the cafe where she works in L.A., where she’s lived since...

“Survivor”

Vera Giaconi

17 min

Colombia

I came across him the other day when I was looking for the snorkel fins in the storage space. I didn’t even remember that I’d left him there. He was covered in dust and had a...

Bear Ears

Carolina Vegas

8 min

Chile

How could I serve myself from such distant plates, when the home had broken, when not even mother could be forced from the lips. How could I dine on nothing. César Vallejo I was born...

The Need to Be a Son

Andrea Jeftanovic

10 min

Spain

My sister always said that it was much better to have a niece or nephew than your own child. I suppose that my mother agreed with her. My sister said that with a nephew you got...

Oxytocin

Miguel Serrano Larraz

10 min

Spain

When I arrived in Brussels, the supposed end of the European dream was all the media could talk about. General levels of uncertainty had increased, as had violence on public transport – for instance, when one...

The Doorbell

Cristian Crusat

11 min

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Mexico

Someone, probably the ticket inspector, told him that his was the only suitcase. No one else was going to Alquila today. There’s no way it can get lost. But Hernández insisted on taking it with him....

One Too Many

Emiliano Monge

9 min

Guatemala

69752. That he had it tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the 1970s, telephone numbers in Guatemala...

The Polish Boxer

Eduardo Halfon

16 min

Catalonia

How quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate. CAVAFY, “Candles” (Tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) “It used to be that wars would thin the herd. Now that there’s peace,...

Engagement Ring

Jordi Nopca

11 min

Colombia

Ricardo González loved to go to the cinema. His first major cinematic memory, many years ago now, was of a black-and-white film about cops and robbers. Before that he only went to the cinema occasionally, once...

The Spectator

Andrés Caicedo

12 min

Uruguay

It was the whole matter of the gifts that made her think back to that night. Whenever they fought and he threw her out of the house, he always made her return the gifts he’d given...

The Size of My Love

Fernanda Trías

16 min

Argentina

In February 2001 we found exactly what we were looking for: a wooden house in the suburbs of Miami with large windows overlooking a canal with green water that flowed into the Atlantic. We considered ourselves...

A House in the Burbs

Valeria Correa Fiz

12 min

Argentina

She has long legs like a pair of rivers coming together at the source, a deep lagoon: dark, wet and mysterious. But she also has a pair of repeating words, a tattoo on her back and...

The Curve

Hernán Ronsino

2 min