A great short story is like a brief flash of light, illuminating pivotal experiences and emotions in its characters’ lives and giving readers a glimpse into another reality. When you lack time and attention or are trying to discover new authors, short stories can also be more manageable, bite-size pieces of reading.
Check out the following short story collections, all written by Black authors from diverse backgrounds and genres. Some are realistic and firmly grounded in our own universe and its history, while others are strange, magical, and off-kilter, but all take just a few pages to show us something about ourselves, about others, and about the world we live in.
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A fantastical and daring book of stories that the celebrated speculative author wrote over a decade. Readers will be transported to strange realms populated with mall ghosts, teenage zombies, and girls who might be gods.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on OverDrive/Libby and as an eBook and eAudiobook on Hoopla.
In this set of loosely linked stories following a group of complex, creative young people in the Midwest, Taylor weaves a tragic but sensitive tapestry of what it feels like to seek love and connection in a murky, judgmental, and hostile world.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and eAudiobook on OverDrive/Libby.
This collection takes the true horrors and injustices of society and reflect them back in a strange, surreal mirror, dropping us in vigilante murder theme parks and a school of genetically modified children. Urgent and disturbing, but laced with humor and compassion, these stories grip you and don’t let go.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and eAudiobook on OverDrive/Libby and an eBook and eAudiobook on Hoopla.
An exuberant and darkly funny set of stories centered around mostly middle-class characters as they examine their Black identity and figure out how to live. Thompson-Spires masterfully blends biting satire with poignant insight into her characters’ trials and tragedies.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and eAudiobook on OverDrive/Libby and as an eAudiobook on Hoopla.
The first short story collection by three-time Hugo award-winning Jemisin is a thrilling, impassioned introduction to her magical worlds infused with social commentary. Many stories feature characters resisting the powers that try to control them, from parasitic aliens to sinister faeries in the Jim Crow South.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and eAudiobook on OverDrive/Libby.
Yanique’s lush, lyrical prose paints a portrait of Caribbean life that is both humorous and heartbreaking. Many of these stories take place in the author’s native St. Thomas and focus on people struggling to find their place in the world while battling exploitation, aching hearts, and conflicting identities.
This title is also available for checkout as an eAudiobook on Hoopla.
The award-winner author and Pittsburgh native’s latest collection expands on the themes that have dominated his life’s work—memory, history, loss, and the realities of Black American life, combining the personal with the historical to deliver a raw, powerful set of stories.
This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and eAudiobook on OverDrive/Libby and eAudiobook on Hoopla.
Short stories explore the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.
You can also check out this title as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on Hoopla.