Part One: Stories --
Chinua Achebe / Civil Peace --
Sherman Alexie / The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven --
Isabelle Allende / An Act of Vengeance --
Sherwood Anderson / Hands --
Margaret Atwood / Happy Endings --
Isaac Babel / My First Goose --
James Baldwin / Sonny's Blues --Toni Cade Bambara / The Lesson --
Russell Banks / Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat --
Lynda Barry / San Francisco [graphic story] --
Donald Barthelme / At the Tolstoy Museum --
Ann Beattie / Janus --
Alison Bechdel / From Fun Home: "Old Father, Old Artificer" [graphic story] --
Ambrose Bierce / Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge --
Roberto Bolano / Jim --
Jorge Luis Borges / The South --
Tadeusz Borowski / This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen --
T. Coraghessan Boyle / Birnam Wood --
Ray Bradbury / August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains --
Albert Camus / The Guest --
Alejo Carpentier / Journey to The Seed --
Angela Carter / The Kiss --
Raymond Carver / Cathedral --
Raymond Carver / A Small, Good Thing --
Raymond Carver / What We Talk About When We Talk About Love --Willa Cather / Paul's Case --
John Cheever / The Swimmer --
Anton Chekhov / The Darling --
Anton Chekhov / The Lady with the Little Dog --
Kate Chopin / Désirée's Baby
Kate Chopin / The Story of an Hour
Sandra Cisneros / Barbie-Q --
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) / Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County --
Joseph Conrad / Heart of Darkness --
Julio Cortázar / Axolotl --
Stephen Crane / The Open Boat --
Edwidge Danticat / Night Women --
Lydia Davis / Blind Date --
Junot Díaz / How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie --
Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far) / The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese --
Edith Maud Eaton (Sui Sin Far) / Her Chinese Husband --
Larry Eigner / Act --
Ralph Ellison / Battle Royal --
Nathan Englander / What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank --
Louise Erdrich / The Red Convertible --
William Faulkner / A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner / That Evening Sun --
F. Scott Fitzgerald / Winter Dreams --
Janet Frame / Two Sheep --
Carlos Fuentes / Pain --
Mary Gaitskill / The Other Place --
Gabriel García Márquez / A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings --
William Gass / A Fugue --
Dagoberto Gilb / Love in L.A. --
Charlotte Perkins Gilman / The Yellow Wallpaper --
Nikolai Gogol / The Overcoat --
Nathaniel Hawthorne / The Minister's Black Veil
Nathaniel Hawthorne / Young Goodman Brown --
Ernest Hemingway / Hills Like White Elephants --
Zora Neale Hurston / the Gilded Six-Bits --Zora Neale Hurston / Sweat --
Washington Irving / Rip Van Winkle --
Shirley Jackson / The Lottery --
Henry James / The Real Thing --
Sarah Orne Jewett / A White Heron --
Ha Jin / Saboteur --
Denis Johnson / Work --
James Joyce / Araby
James Joyce / The Dead
Franz Kafka / A Hunger Artist --
Franz Kafka / The Metamorphosis --
Etgar Keret / Not Human Beings --
Jamaica Kincaid / Girl --
Nora Krug / Kamikaze [graphic story] --
Jhumpa Lahiri / Interpreter of Maladies --
D.H. Lawrence / Odour of Chrysanthemums --
D.H. Lawrence / The Rocking Horse Winner --
Ursula K. Le Guin / The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas --
Doris Lessing / To Room 19 --
Clarice Lispector / The Smallest Woman in the World --
Jack London / To Build a Fire --
Katherine Mansfield / Miss Brill --
Bobbie Ann Mason / Shiloh --
Guy de Maupassant / The Necklace --
Herman Melville / Bartleby, the Scrivener
Steven Millhauser / Flying Carpets --
Lorrie Moore / Referential --
Alice Munro / Age of Faith --
Haruki Murakami / UFO in Kushiro --
Vladimir Nabokov / Signs and Symbols --
Santiago Nazarian / Fish Spine --
Joyce Carol Oates / The Lady with the Pet Dog --
Joyce Carol Oates / Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? --
Tim O'Brien / The Things They Carried --
Flannery O'Connor / Everything That Rises Must Converge --
Flannery O'Connor / Good Country People --
Flannery O'Connor / A Good Man Is Hard to Find --
Frank O'Connor / Guests of the Nation --
Tillie Olsen / I Stand Here Ironing --
Daniel Orozco / Orientation --
Julie Otsuka / The Children --
Cynthia Ozick / The Shawl --
ZZ Packer / Brownies --
Grace Paley / A Conversation with My Father --
Grace Paley / Mother --
Octavio Paz / My Life with the Wave --
Edgar Allan Poe / The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe / The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe / The Tell-Tale Heart
Katherine Anne Porter / Maria Concepción --
W.S. Porter (O. Henry) / The Gift of the Magi --
Annie Proulx / Job History --
Jamie Quatro / 1.7 To Tennessee --
Philip Roth / The Conversion of the Jews --
Joe Sacco / From Palestine: Refugeeland [graphic story] --
Marjane Satrapi / From Persepolis: The Veil [graphic story] --
George Saunders / Sticks --
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh / A Brief Encounter with The Enemy --
Leslie Marmon Silko / Yellow Woman --
Art Spiegelman / Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History [graphic story] --
John Steinbeck / The Chrysanthemums --
Amy Tan / Two Kinds --
Leo Tolstoy / The Death of Ivan Ilych --
Jean Toomer / Blood-Burning Moon --
John Updike / A & P --
Luis Alberto Urrea / Father Returns From the Mountain --
Helen Maria Viramontes / Miss Clairol --
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. / Harrison Bergeron --
Alice Walker / Everyday Use --
David Foster Wallace / Everything Is Green --
Eudora Welty / A Worn Path --
Edith Wharton / The Other Two --
John Edgar Wideman / newborn thrown in trash and dies --
William Carlos Williams / The Use of Force --
Tobias Wolff / Bullet in the Brain --
Tobias Wollf / Say Yes --
Virginia Woolf / Kew Gardens --
Richard Wright / The Man Who Was Almost a Man --
Part Two: Commentaries --
Part Three: Casebooks.