I’ve been using stories from these books with my freshmen: https://a.co/d/cTDWmIc https://a.co/d/hpLd0su

George Saunders, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/15/the-semplica-girl-diaries-fiction-george-saunders

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue is lovely—as are The Moth’s All These Wonders, The Unreal and the Real by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Worst Years of Your Life (edited by Mark Jude Poirier). The McSweeney’s Best American Nonrequired Reading series is a mix of many genres, but its short stories are always a hit for me.

Try pairing The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Le Guin) with N.K. Jemison’s fabulous The Ones Who Stay And Fight. It’s a mighty combo.

What a strange question… I mean, on the one hand I hear what you’re saying, and I get it. It makes a kind of quiet and unquestionable sense… But on the other hand I’m like: Go pick up a book! Go to the library! There’s literally thousands of books of short stories coming out every year and unless you’ve got some archaic notion of what does and does not belong in the classroom, literally any single one of them could do…

Seventh Grade by Gary Soto.

I am not an English teacher but my dad was and I studied lit and briefly taught bb kids. Anyway, over explained context aside — In one of my Latino studies masters classes we read Daniel Alarcon’s “The King is Always Above the People,” which I found effective and impactful. I also wonder if you could pair some age-appropriate Karen Russel with more traditional shorts for high schoolers. I also read Ramona Ausubel’s “A Guide to Being Born” multiple times the year it came out (2013).I could [cont]