What to Read for Short Story Month
There’s a great saying about short stories that goes something like: A short story is like looking in the window; a novel is like living in the house. I love this way of thinking about short stories – brief, stolen glimpses of a particular moment when something extraordinary happens. Something changes. And often, when a short story is at its best, it changes you too.
May is Short Story Month, which means there’s no better time to dive into a collection of bite-sized reads! Whether you’re a longtime fan of the short story, or just discovering how powerful the form can be - here are 10 short story collections from Canadian indie presses to satisfy your craving for something short and sweet. Or… short and sinister. Short and weird? Short and beautiful. These collections have all that and more. Just be warned – the stories may be short, but you’ll be thinking about them long after you’ve turned the last page.
THE PUMP
by Sydney Hegele (Invisible Publishing, 2021)
This is a collection of interconnected stories about a small Southern Ontario town known as The Pump. Heather O’Neil called this one “… a strange surprising delight… at once untenable and grotesquely beautiful.” And she’s not wrong. The stories are full of queerness and weirdness and a gothic sense of dread. Oh, did I mention the carnivorous beavers? Yeah, Sydney threw some of those in too. If you’re looking for small town/dark magic vibes – this one’s for you.
A DREAM OF A WOMAN
by Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021)
Longlisted for the Giller Prize, this collection is intimate and evocative, bittersweet and beautiful all at the same time. The stories center trans women and the characters are flawed and frustrating and fragile. There’s a rawness and a realness to Casey’s writing – you feel like you could easily bump into any one of her characters at the grocery store, and then it would be awkward because you know about their addictions, their desires, their fears. This collection takes you from Portland to the Prairies to New York City and it’s a journey you won’t forget.
HER FIRST PALESTINIAN
by Saeed Teebi (House of Anansi, 2022)
I’ll be honest – when I first picked this up, I knew very little about Palestine and wasn’t really looking to be educated. I was just looking for good stories. And Saeed is a really good storyteller. He is a Palestinian author who writes about the Palestinian diaspora in a way that is funny and surprising, and never preachy. If you’re a fan of Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How to Pronounce Knife, you’ll love this graceful, subtle, insightful collection.
LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
by Kim Fu (Coach House Books, 2022)
This one was on every “best of” list of 2022 (including being shortlisted for the Giller Prize and winning the Writers Union of Canada Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best first short story collection, among others), but look, we were in a pandemic and maybe we all lived under a rock for a while there. These are stories filled with the uncanny, the surreal, and the fantastic hidden in the everyday. Kim’s imagination is electric and her stories shock and sizzle on the page.
HER BODY AMONG ANIMALS
by Paola Ferrante (Book*hug Press, 2023)
From a woman who transforms into a spider, to a couple grappling with space travel, to a sentient sex robot, to a wife escaping her marriage to a dragon – this collection blends elements of science fiction and fairy tale as a jumping off point to talk about a range of challenging topics, including depression and domestic violence. Poetic and precise in equal measure, each of Paola’s stories is its own tiny world; a unique gem that sparkles brightly, but also cuts deep.
AVALANCHE
by Jessica Westhead (Invisible Publishing, 2023)
Jessica pulls off something quite tricky in this collection – she somehow manages to call out the polite racism of middle-aged, middle-class white ladies, while also holding space for empathy, humour, and compassionate reckoning with unintended (but very real) harms. Playful writing collides with profound reflections on white privilege in stories that will make you laugh, make you cringe, and maybe make you see the world a little differently.
THE WHOLE ANIMAL
by Corinna Chong (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023)
The central question at the heart of this collection seems to be what makes us human? What instincts and impulses must we suppress? And what happens when our animal brains get the better of us? Corinna’s writing is stripped-down, sometimes ambiguous, and leaves readers with more questions than easy answers. Human and animal bodies, cruelties, and curiosities are on full display in these stories that speak to the relentless pressures and contradictions of our contemporary world.
THINGS THAT CAUSE INAPPROPRIATE HAPPINES by Danila Botha (Guernica Editions, 2024)
This is Danila’s third collection of short stories and it really proves her to be a master of the form. As the title of the book might suggest, her characters are provocative, unruly, complex, and conflicted – and the twists their stories take make for a propulsive read. The stories explore what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be an artist, and what it means to be a woman, and they do it with a sharp wit and a big heart.
PERFECT LITTLE ANGELS
by Vincent Anioke (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024)
The stories in this collection have a musicality to them – and like great music, they have the power to shift your mood, to transport you, to evoke and inspire. These are stories of Nigeria, stories where desire meets duty, where religion meets rebellion, and where brutality and tenderness strike an uneasy balance. Vincent’s writing probes at masculinity, queerness, and cultural expectations, and crafts something stunning out of the broken pieces left after they all smash together.
PEACOCKS OF INSTAGRAM
by Deepa Rajagopalan (House of Anansi, 2024)
This collection offers candid snapshots of the small braveries and strange twists of fate that connect ordinary people across time and continents. Deepa’s characters are dreamers and survivors, risk takers and rule breakers, and she writes about the South Asian diaspora with a fresh voice that flips the script on traditional immigrant narratives. Canisia Lubrin calls the collection “… a beautiful, rich, savvy book” and honestly, I couldn’t describe it better myself!
Anuja Varghese is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work appears in Hobart, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Plenitude Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, So to Speak Journal, Flock Literary Journal, and Corvid Queen: A Journal of Feminist Fairy Tales, among others. Her work has been recognized in the PRISM International Short Fiction Contest, the Pigeon Pages Fiction Contest, and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition. She writes literary fiction, speculative fiction, and erotica/romance – and combinations of all three – where women of colour get leading roles!
Anuja has work featured in Best Women’s Erotica Volume 6 (Cleis Press, 2020), When Other People Saw Us, They Saw the Dead, (Haunt Press, 2022), and Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). Her debut short story collection titled Chrysalis (House of Anansi, 2023), explores South Asian diaspora experience through a feminist, speculative lens. In 2023, Chrysalis won the Writer’s Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers AND the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction.
Anuja is also a professional grant writer and editor and in 2021, took on the role of Fiction Editor with The Ex-Puritan Magazine. She holds a degree in English Literature from McGill University and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto.
Anuja lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner, two kids, and two cats.
