This extraordinary collection gathers short-short stories--none longer than 1,800 words--by some of North Carolina's best contemporary writers, including Doris Betts, Orson Scott Card, Fred Chappell, Sarah Dessen, Haven Kimmel, Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, and Daniel Wallace. The stories are compulsively readable. The spellbinding elements of brevity, variety, and surprise conspire to keep readers flipping pages. Comic, tragic, magical, fantastical, provocative, disturbing, luminous, the short-short form proves a reliably elastic and dazzling medium for every writer featured.

In one flash of literary artistry after another, these sixty-five established and emerging writers remind us why we read fiction: to laugh, to learn, to feel, to be discomfited and challenged, to be transported, and to make enlightening and enduring connections with the world outside our own skins. Long Story Short will appeal to legions of fans who already delight in reading many of the North Carolina authors included here and will introduce them to extraordinary writers they have not yet discovered.

Contributors:
Max Steele
Anthony S. Abbott
Daphne Athas
Russell Banks
Wilton Barnhardt
Doris Betts
Will Blythe
Wendy Brenner
Amy Knox Brown
Bekah Brunstetter
Orson Scott Card
Fred Chappell
Kelly Cherry
Elizabeth Cox
Quinn Dalton
Angela Davis-Gardner
Sarah Dessen
Pamela Duncan
Pam Durban
Clyde Edgerton
Tracie Fellers
Ben Fountain
Philip Gerard
Marianne Gingher
Gail Godwin
Jim Grimsley
Virginia Holman
Randall Kenan
John Kessel
Haven Kimmel
Carrie Knowles
Telisha Moore Leigg
Peter Makuck
Michael Malone
Doug Marlette
Margaret Maron
Jill McCorkle
Philip McFee
John McNally
Heather Ross Miller
Lydia Millet
Katherine Min
Courtney Jones Mitchell
Ruth Moose
Robert Morgan
Shelia Moses
Lawrence Naumoff
Jenny Offill
Elizabeth Oliver
Michael Parker
Peggy Payne
Joe Ashby Porter
Denise Rickman
David Rowell
John Rowell
Deborah Seabrooke
Dave Shaw
Bland Simpson
Lee Smith
June Spence
Elizabeth Spencer
Melanie Sumner
Daniel Wallace
Luke Whisnant
Lynn York

Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-five of North Carolina's Finest Writers