14 Canadian short story collections to read for Short Story Month
May is Short Story Month. Celebrate by checking out one of these great Canadian short story collections.
May is Short Story Month. Celebrate by checking out one of these great Canadian short story collections.
If you're also interested in poetry, the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is accepting submissions until June 1. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems of a maximum of 600 words (including titles).
Welcome to the Neighbourhood by Clea Young
Welcome to the Neighbourhood is a short story collection distinctly rooted in the Pacific Northwest. The characters within these stories are women and girls who live in the mountains and neighbourhoods in and around Vancouver — these are characters who seek connection and an escape from isolation. The stories feature themes of love, loss, fear and survival.
Clea Young is a writer based in B.C. Her writing has been featured in publications such as the 2025 Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Stories, where her stories have been included three times and been shortlisted for the award twice. Her debut story collection, Teardown, was published in 2016. She made the 2012 CBC Short Story Prize shortlist and the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize longlist.
Annapurna's Bounty by Veena Gokhale
Delight your tastebuds and imagination in Annapurna's Bounty, a collection of Indian legends where food plays different roles in the lives of a diverse cast of characters — from kings and commoners to witches, goddesses, gurus, bandits, refugees and travelers. Each story is also paired with a vegetarian recipe from the four corners of India.
Veena Gokhale is a Montreal-based author. Her previous works include the fiction books Bombay Wali and Other Stories and Land for Fatimah. She has also worked in journalism, teaching, literary curation and the non-profit sector.
Dead Writers by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, Naben Ruthnum
From a lovelorn journalist entering a diabolical pact to a tourist attempting to stay sober, Dead Writers is a collection of short stories exploring what the ever-changing concept of "bargain" means, and the heavy price that comes with corrupting your soul.
Jean Marc Ah-Sen is a Toronto-based writer of Mauritian descent. His books include Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean's, Hazlitt, the Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The Toronto Star.
Michael LaPointe is a writer and critic from Toronto. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement. He is also the author of the thriller The Creep.
Regina-raised Cassidy McFadzean is a past finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. Her previous works include the poetry books Drolleries, Crying Dress and Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also wrote a crown of sonnets called Third State of Being. She currently lives in Toronto.
Naben Ruthnum is a Toronto journalist and writer. His 2017 book Curry is an engaging and insightful long-form essay that connects the dots between the popular dish and how it functions as shorthand for brown identity in representing the food, culture and social perception of the South Asian diaspora. Under the pseudonym of Nathan Ripley, he is also the author of Find You in the Dark, which was an Arthur Ellis Awards finalist for best first novel. Your Life Is Mine, his second thriller using the pseudonym, was published in 2019.
A Quiet Disappearance by Rabindranath Maharaj
A Quiet Disappearance is a story collection revolving around older men and women from the Caribbean islands who must face their pasts, with contend with regret and what could have been. Stories focus on marginalized characters who are at a critical juncture in life and contemplating the passing of others with whom they shared a relationship.
Rabindranath Maharaj is the author of several novels and short story collections. His novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy won both the Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award. Previous books were nominated for various awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Chapters First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In January 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, among others.
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson
A Way to Be Happy is a short story collection that follows various characters as they try to find happiness. Ranging from mundane to extraordinary, the stories feature everything from a pair of addicts robbing parties to fund their sobriety to a Russian hitman dealing with an illness and reliving his past.
Caroline Adderson is the Vancouver-based author of five novels, including The Sky is Falling, Ellen in Pieces and A Russian Sister. She has also published two short story collections, including the 1993 Governor General's Literary Award finalist Bad Imaginings.
Adderson's awards include three B.C. Book Prizes, a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction. She has received the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is also a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prizes, and A Way to Be Happy was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Bad Houses by John Elizabeth Stintzi
The short story collection Bad Houses features narratives that are dark, witty and with elements of horror and the absurd. Its stories include a doctor who discovers a double-edged cure for the Ebola virus, a college student who loses a different body part each time they return home for the summer, a hairdresser striving to keep his client's secrets and a young girl who develops a fascination with the trolls that harvest her father's pumpkin patch.
John Elizabeth Stintzi is a writer from northwestern Ontario, currently based in Kansas City, Mo. Their work Selections From Junebat won the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the Malahat Review's 2019 Long Poem Prize. The complete poetry collection, Junebat, was published in 2020. They are also the author of the novel Vanishing Monuments, which was a finalist for the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Devouring Tomorrow, edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella
From climate change to the declining population of bees, Devouring Tomorrow is a collection of short stories that imagines how the current social, environmental and political issues of our time will affect not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.
Jeff Dupuis is the Toronto-based author of the Creature X Mystery series.
A.G. Pasquella is an American Canadian writer based in Toronto. He is the author of the Jack Palace series, which includes the novels Yard Dog, Carve The Heart and Season of Smoke. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Wholphin, The Believer, Black Book, Broken Pencil and Utne Reader.
Skin by Catherine Bush
Skin is a collection of stories that delves into how acts of intimacy can take on strange and perplexing forms in a world shaped by climate change, ecological disasters and the tumult of viruses. From a man who falls in love with the wind to a woman fixated on washing strangers' feet, the stories explore the unexpected ways human connection is affected by a transforming world.
Catherine Bush is the Toronto-based bestselling author of five novels. Her previous works include the Trillium Book Award finalist Claire's Head and New York Times Notable Book The Rules of Engagement. Her latest novel Blaze Island was a Globe and Mail and Writers' Trust of Canada Best Book of the Year and a 2021 Hamilton Reads Selection. Bush is an associate professor at the University of Guelph's Creative Writing MFA program.
Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel by Andrew Kaufman
The Shamrock Motel can't be reached with directions — you can only get there if you're lost in your heart and soul. In Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel, a collection of connected stories share how a stay at the mysterious motel leads to transformative, and wild experiences.
Andrew Kaufman is a writer from Ontario. His previous works include the novel All My Friends Are Superheroes which won the Relit Award, was nominated for the Leacock Medal for Humour and listed among the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail.
Good Victory by Mikka Jacobsen
From a woman reconnecting with a childhood friend at a psychic fair, to a neuropsychology student stealing cocaine from his lab rat to impress a date, Good Victory is a collection of short stories about the strange and absurd aspects of growing up, and being human, in the 21st century.
Mikka Jacobsen is a writer of fiction and non-fiction from Calgary. Her work has appeared in Joyland, The Fiddlehead and Prairie Fire, among others. She is also the author of Modern Fable, a collection of essays. Good Victory is her first collection of stories.
Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Complex Indigenous lives intersect in the stories that make up Coexistence. Stretching across Canadian prairies and the West Coast, we travel to reserves, university campuses and lodgings of old residential schools to meet characters learning to live with and love one another and accept the realities of the past, present and future happening together all at once.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta. His first novel was A Minor Chorus. This Wound is a World, Belcourt's debut collection of poetry, won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize. The collection also won the 2018 Indigenous Voices Award for most significant work of poetry in English and was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Other Worlds by André Alexis
Spanning from 19th-century Trinidad and Tobago to a small town in Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to modern-day Toronto, Other Worlds is a short story collection that explores characters encountering moments of profound puzzlement in these diverse settings.
André Alexis was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and raised in Ottawa. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award (now known as the Amazon.ca First Novel Award) and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral, Asylum, The Hidden Keys, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Days by Moonlight, which won the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was on the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.
Alexis's novel Fifteen Dogs, championed by Humble The Poet, won Canada Reads 2017 and the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Remaindered People & Other Stories by Pratap Reddy
In Pratap Reddy's second short story collection Remaindered People & Other Stories, he sheds light on an often overlooked side of immigration: the parents who stay behind in their home country while their children move abroad. The stories explore the difficult choices these parents face, such as whether they should join their children in their new country or wait for them to return.
Reddy works as an underwriter by day and a writer by night, focusing on both the joys and struggles of newly arrived immigrants. His previous works include the novel Ramya's Treasure and the short story collection Weather Permitting & Other Stories. He lives in Mississauga, Ont.
Not the Same Road Out edited by K.J. Denny
Not the Same Road Out is a story collection set along the many roads and byways of the Trans Canada Trail, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic oceans. The book features a story for every province and territory; the tales within include moments of mystery, horror and melodrama alongside themes of estrangement, engagement and isolation.
K.J. Denny is a journalist and editor with more than 30 years of experience in Asia, North America and the United Kingdom. She is currently an independent creative consultant. Denny formerly worked in magazine and book publishing.
