Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Morocco

I held an unusually long reed in my hand and I dipped it as deep as I could into the river. It fell in and disappeared in front of me. I took my feet out of...

Ladybird

Latifa Labsir

7 min

Palestine

“I’m a romantic, you brutes, and I adore Nizar Qabbani!” This was Karim’s only reply to people’s accusations and taunts. And it was on the basis of this reply that the camp residents had added the...

Karim the Romantic, Bather of the Dead

Ziad Khadash

4 min

Argentina

The blinds are pulled down; the old couple who live opposite must be on holiday. Before, the old woman would come out every morning to water the plants on her balcony. The old man would stay...

Ballet

Federico Falco

22 min

Sudan

Citizen Jabir Sabeel awoke to the alarm of his Nokia mobile phone at exactly 6:05. He tried, like every morning, to cover his face with a pillow, but he felt an awful weakness. He could not...

Jabir Sabeel

Mansour Mohammad El Souwaim

2 min

Tunisia

“These cities have devoured you,” he said as he pulled out the chair and sat down in the middle of the cramped room. He lit his pipe with a lighter that looked almost like a pen....

The Visit

Unknown Author

6 min

USA

The first time Anna heard her son’s heartbeat, it was through the doctor’s stethoscope; a hummingbird beat, a frantic thumping; a small frenetic voice. She was a linguist, the first of her circle of friends to...

Ain’t No Word But Lonely

Rachel A. Levine

9 min

USA

Maggie is an expectant mother in a state that grants personhood at conception and protects the child’s rights over those of their mother. The world changed when I wasn’t looking. That’s what it felt like,...

Tertullian’s Law

Tia Levings

10 min

Israel

“I have not yet begun to fight!” John Paul Jones 1 The road descends all the way to the sea, as though the whole world was a huge basin where everything drove, sailed, glided...

And The Sea Is Not Full

Edna Shemesh

11 min

USA

Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted. -Letter excerpt, Emily Dickinson, 1876. Chilled Autumn air settled over me, the dryness of it tickling my lungs....

The Castle in the Woods

Isabella Connor

9 min

Mexico

In the early nineties, The Beach of The Dead was little more than a greyish strip at one end of Boca del Rio, Veracruz’ twin city. Its burning sands were covered in spiny scrubs festooned with...

The UFO, The Beach, and The Dead

Fernanda Melchor

8 min

Sweden

When Dad’s eyelids drop like a guillotine she pulls the car door shut with a click. He turns his gaze to the road, and from her shady spot in the backseat she can only see his...

The Father Hole

Andrea Lundgren

32 min

Germany

We used to jump, Lydia and I, as high and as often as we could, hands high over our heads, wearing colourful dresses, our knees pulled up, our feet in stout shoes we were allowed to...

Lydia

Zsuzsa Bánk

10 min

Palestine

We didn’t stay long at the bar. After we got Melanie’s text, I had the feeling that each of us wanted the other to finish their drink so we could take off for one of our...

Scenario (A Chapter from a Novel)

Saleem Albeik

7 min

Mexico

Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground...

Rock-n-Roll Flower

Luis Carlos Fuentes Ávila

20 min

Israel

A woman is workspace when will someone love you? Have you ever stayed seated in your chair until lunchtime, you drink lots of water- your body took the shape of a chair. A woman in workspace,...

A Woman in a Space

Tehila Hakimi

3 min

Eritrea

A Chapter from the novel, Black Foam (7) He placed the suitcase lightly into the tray, and then took off to meet it on the other side. However, the soldier across from him waved...

Black Foam

Haji Jaber

6 min

Faroe Islands

A runner asked me one morning on my way to work, “Hey, you. Can you tell me what time it is?” I replied, “Ten to.” “To what?” he asked. I stared at him briefly. “To eight,”...

Some People Run in Shorts

Sólrún Michelsen

7 min

Israel

I wash my hands, scrubbing them. They still smell of shit. 1. Sophie went joyfully down the slide, straight into Danny’s waiting arms. When he offered to help her climb back up, she said, “By myself.”...

Safe Zone

Deakla Keydar

9 min

The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie

UK

John’s childhood ambition was to be a pilot. Let’s sit with that a while. A boy grew up, like so many other boys all over the world, watching the skies, imagining himself in the endless blue....

The Lover’s Tale as told to Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie

15 min

Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness

USA

You got it wrong, son. You exaggerated the wrong things and failed to exaggerate the right things. I know you’re supposed to know your business, but you wrote your story from a long way off and...

Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness

Matt Cashion

12 min

USA

Two people came through the double glass doors of a twelve-story brick building and walked along the chain link fence to the parking lot. The tall, gray-haired man guided the short, white-haired woman by her elbow,...

Leaving the Meadows

Megan Staffel

18 min

Palestine

Although I was only ten years old, I could understand that something important had happened. Every time our bedroom door opened, my mother shut it again so we wouldn’t hear the frantic whispering in the living...

Scandal

Alaa Hlehel

4 min

Palestine

When Suzanne came back from Switzerland, she’d left three-quarters of her body weight behind. That wasn’t her only loss, however, or the most significant. And I don’t think she’d object if I told you that losing...

Lucerne Tunnel

Khalil Nasif

3 min

UK

When Glory’s parents christened her Glorybetogod Ngozi Akunyili, they did not foresee Facebook’s “real name” policy, nor the weeks she would spend populating forms and submitting copies of her bills and driver’s license and the certificate...

Glory

Lesley Nneka Arimah

20 min