A glowing collection of new stories from up-and-coming voices and celebrated authors alike, Small Odysseys celebrates the latest gems of contemporary short fiction. Striking and joyful, the collection elucidates the character of the current literary landscape while featuring the voices of thirty-five luminaries testing the limits of the form. Small Odysseys is a celebration of the exhilarating diversity of modern short stories. This event was a must-see for any contemporary short story lover.
Hannah Tinti joined contributors Jai Chakrabarti, A. M. Homes, and Weike Wang to discuss this thrilling and impactful collection of works.
Photos by Kelsie Lynn Bennett
Featured Book
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Small Odysseys
By Hannah Tinti (Editor)
Published by Algonquin
Small Odysseys sweeps the reader into the landscape of the contemporary short story, featuring never-before-published works by many of our most preeminent authors as well as up-and-coming superstars, all in a single beautiful volume.
Published in partnership with the beloved literary radio program and live show Selected Shorts, this collection captures its spirit in print for the first time. The thirty-five stories in this volume will be honored in a full-day event at the time of publication, performed live in New York and streamed in real time all over the globe.
For longtime fans of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts, as well as readers of anthologies like Best American or magazines like One Story, this wide-ranging collection is a must-have for any lover of contemporary literature. As varied and diverse as the modern literary world itself, it offers stories that are in turn striking, generous, provocative, and joyful—and on every page extraordinary.
In Conversation
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Jai Chakrabarti
Jai Chakrabarti
Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, is long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a fall 2021 Oprah Magazine Pick. He is also the author of the forthcoming story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Knopf, 2023). His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize and also performed on Selected Shorts by Symphony Space. His nonfiction has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Writer’s Digest, Berfrois, and LitHub. He was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and is a trained computer scientist. Born in Kolkata, India, he now lives in New York with his family.
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A. M. Homes
A. M. Homes
A. M. Homes is the author of the novels Jack, In a County of Mothers, The End of Alice, Music for Torching, This Book Will Save Your Life, and May We Be Forgiven, winner of the Orange/ Women’s Prize for Fiction. Homes is also the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the short-story collections The Safety of Objects, Things You Should Know, and Days of Awe. She teaches in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton.
Photo Credit: Marion Ettlinger
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Hannah Tinti
Hannah Tinti
Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her novel The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley was a national bestseller, finalist for the Edgar Award and New England Book Award for Best Novel of the Year, and has been optioned for television. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Excellence in Editing. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program, cofounded the Sirenland Writers Conference, and from 2010–2013 was the literary commentator on Selected Shorts.
Photo Credit: Honorah Tinti
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Weike Wang
Weike Wang
Weike Wang is the author of the novel Chemistry. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Redivider, and the New Yorker, among other publications, and her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is the recipient of the 2018 Pen/Hemingway Award, a Whiting Award, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Prize.
