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For a long time, I had a strong dislike for short stories. I much prefer novels or series, and always wondered what the appeal of short stories was. A few years ago, though, my dad gave me a collection of short stories by Alice Munro, called Dear Life. Each story is focused around a climax, but rather than finishing on a certain resolve, each story ends at the height of the moment. Dear Life was the collection that helped me love short stories, and reaffirmed for me the idea that if you don't like reading, it's because you're not reading the right things.

What are your favorite short stories?

I love short stories, but mainly collections of various authors. Although I have got a book of Roald Dahl short stories that I go back to again and again.
But you're right about reading the right ones, I didn't 'get' short stories for a long time and saw them as a poor relation of the novel, but I now appreciate the skill that goes into writing one.

I love Alice Munro and Shirley Jackson. I don't remember who wrote it, but A Good Man Is Hard To Find really made an impression on me as a high school junior. I reread it the other day and loved it even more than I did then. I also loved I Want A Wife. It made me appreciate all the things we took for granted growing up.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories have to be my all time favorites.

Anton Chekhov is one of the best short story authors of all time :

Sasha For wrote:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories have to be my all time favorites.

I'd have to agree with Sasha For. Doyle is the only writer whose entire canon of short stories I have read several times.

Another of my favorites is Saki (H.H.Munro)
Here's a very short sample if you'd like to try him out for yourself.
eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/O ... eWin.shtml

I like Isaac Asimov, with his I, Robot series of short stories

Roald Dahl was the first writer to get me into this genre. Some of my other favourite short story writers include Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman and Ursula le Guin. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is pretty awesome as well. I love reading short stories, but I usually read them as collections, so I'm ashamed to say that the writer's name doesn't always stick in my head.

I recently completed such a fascinating collection of short stories called 'Kissing the Witch' by Emma Donoghue - familiar fairy tales linked together and rewritten from a queer feminist position. I read the whole thing in a sitting and it left me with shivers down my spine.

I love short stories written by Ruskin Bond.

Jo90 wrote:?.. I have got a book of Roald Dahl short stories that I go back to again and again.

This is exactly who I was thinking of. Loved his children's stories growing up. He definitely has some great (and dark) adult shorts.

Alice Munro, without a doubt.

HP Lovecraft's short stories are the best for me, and he inspires me in my own writing of my horror fiction. Also Edgar A. Poe is good, as I have enjoyed every single one of his creepy stories.

Nathaniel Hawthorne. I had to read several of his stories in school long ago, Young Goodman Brown, The Minister's Black Veil, and The May-Pole of Merry Mount. Those three stories have haunted me ever since. Truly, once I read them, I could never forget them.

Poe. Hop Frog, The Cask of Amontillado, The Mask of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum...enough said. Did anyone NOT have to read those in school? And creepy is not the word for them. They stick with you.

Right now, I'm really partial to Eric James Stone.

Richard Matheson, who wrote "Born of Man and Woman," among many others, is an unsung hero of short fiction. A lot of his stories have been made into movies, so you probably know him, even if you don't.