Short: An International Anthology of Five Centuries of Short-Short Stories, Prose Poems, Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms - Softcover

Short is an important and impressive document...Alan Ziegler, editor of Short, is the right man for the job.

...the intriguing new collection....offers his readers an enticing foray into the pleasures of brief, compressed works.

Short does an incredible amount of research and heavy lifting, presenting a cross-section of short-form prose, collecting the works of different countries and eras in the most comprehensive anthology I've yet encountered. ... Short masterfully displays the incredible diversity and creativity engendered by even the shortest works. ... From humor to heartbreak and back again, the stories and short works in Short offer a whirlwind tour exploring what the written word is capable of, the tip of an impossibly valuable iceberg.

Short prose forms are elusive to define--one writer's prose poem is another's flash fiction or brief essay. Rather than quibble, Short opts for inclusiveness. Here is a dazzling array: 100s of pieces (under 1250 words) from 24 Western countries, written over five centuries by more than 200 contributors, including major authors of every era. Fables, histories, aphorisms, anecdotes, faux dictionary entries, a faux job application, hint fiction, lists, tableaus, meditations, chants, rants, and much more. Intensely pleasurable.Contributors include: Montaigne, von Kleist, Leopardi, Poe, Baudelaire, Bierce, Chopin, Stein, Jacob, Woolf, Kafka, J. Roth, Toomer, Borges, Queneau, Kunitz, Beckett, Milosz, Cortazar, Paz, Barthes, Calvino, O'Hara, Merwin, Lispector, Transtromer, Sanchez, Edson, Simic, Atwood, Valenzuela, Wideman, L. Davis, Komunyakaa, A. Carson, Forche, Harjo, Hempel, Wenderoth, Keret, B. Marcus, A. Bender, Eggers, B. Lerner, T. Brimhall.