What do you think?
Rate this book
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction
Welcome to the first anthology to identify and celebrate a new nonfiction form: the Short! Something is going on out there. Almost simultaneously, many of our finest writers are experimenting with a new nonfiction form: brief pieces that are literary and personal rather than informational, complete in themselves, and short―very short. Although the form has not had a name until now, the writers who are attracted to it include the known―Tim O'Brien, Barry Lopez, Terry Tempest Williams, Michael Ondaatje―as well as just-discovered voices in the field of creative nonfiction, a genre that is transforming the essay. Delights and surprises await the reader in this rich gathering of Shorts. From Diane Ackerman's fascination with hummingbirds, to Andrei Codrescu's idiosyncratic view of nostalgia, to Albert Goldbarth's free-wheeling riff on the universe, each Short―ranging from several paragraphs to 2,000 words―becomes a sharply focused lens on an outer world or an inner sensibility. In Short , reflecting almost every way in which nonfiction can be written, is for all readers (and writers) who thrive on imaginative play and aesthetic satisfaction. Pick up this book; open it up. See if you can resist it.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1996
19 people are currently reading
338 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
May 7, 2017
Consider this research.
My coworker friend brought this for me to read when we both decided that we were going to apply to the MFA program at the university where we work. She is planning on concentrating on fiction and I made the somewhat bizarre choice to make my concentration on creative nonfiction. She remembered this book from her college days and brought it for me, and I'm glad that she did.
This collection is filled with "brief" creative nonfiction essays. "Brief" means just that - these are short essays, some less than even a page, some a page and a half. The longest in the batch may have been a full two pages. So one can see how many essays like that can fit in a book this size. This is the sort of book that is best to read in small batches. I tried to read an essay or two each night before bed for a while, but then that didn't work, and I went weeks without picking it up at all. But I finished it yesterday by sitting down and plowing through the second half of the book.
There's an interesting organization here. While the book is not broken up into sections, many readers will find that there are packs of essays that fit a theme before moving onto the next theme. I actually really enjoyed this, and loved that there were no section titles that told me which each theme would be. I found myself trying to figure out the theme of each essay and how it relates to the essay before, the essay after, etc. It's an interesting compilation in that sense.
It also covers a lot of different authors, many of whom are well-known names (Rita Dove, David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie, Cynthia Ozick, Andrei Codrescu, just to name a few), and at least one whose bio at the end said this was his first published work. That's the guy I want to be. I want to be the guy that writes that essay that winds up in a collection with other super big-name writers because I can hold my own.
This book was exceptionally helpful to me as well, from a research point of view. As I binge-read yesterday, I took periodic breaks to write quick "flash" essays myself that I may or may not use in my actual MFA application. Looking at these essays in this book from that perspective really challenged me to think about how I might write an essay on some of the themes included in the collection, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Also, for what it's worth, I've been out of the classroom for about 16 years now, so I'm trying to retrain my mind how to think critically about my own writing while studying the craft of others. Here's hoping.
My coworker friend brought this for me to read when we both decided that we were going to apply to the MFA program at the university where we work. She is planning on concentrating on fiction and I made the somewhat bizarre choice to make my concentration on creative nonfiction. She remembered this book from her college days and brought it for me, and I'm glad that she did.
This collection is filled with "brief" creative nonfiction essays. "Brief" means just that - these are short essays, some less than even a page, some a page and a half. The longest in the batch may have been a full two pages. So one can see how many essays like that can fit in a book this size. This is the sort of book that is best to read in small batches. I tried to read an essay or two each night before bed for a while, but then that didn't work, and I went weeks without picking it up at all. But I finished it yesterday by sitting down and plowing through the second half of the book.
There's an interesting organization here. While the book is not broken up into sections, many readers will find that there are packs of essays that fit a theme before moving onto the next theme. I actually really enjoyed this, and loved that there were no section titles that told me which each theme would be. I found myself trying to figure out the theme of each essay and how it relates to the essay before, the essay after, etc. It's an interesting compilation in that sense.
It also covers a lot of different authors, many of whom are well-known names (Rita Dove, David James Duncan, Sherman Alexie, Cynthia Ozick, Andrei Codrescu, just to name a few), and at least one whose bio at the end said this was his first published work. That's the guy I want to be. I want to be the guy that writes that essay that winds up in a collection with other super big-name writers because I can hold my own.
This book was exceptionally helpful to me as well, from a research point of view. As I binge-read yesterday, I took periodic breaks to write quick "flash" essays myself that I may or may not use in my actual MFA application. Looking at these essays in this book from that perspective really challenged me to think about how I might write an essay on some of the themes included in the collection, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Also, for what it's worth, I've been out of the classroom for about 16 years now, so I'm trying to retrain my mind how to think critically about my own writing while studying the craft of others. Here's hoping.
November 13, 2014
I would not recommend reading this volume the way I did - several short pieces in a row without a break. These kinds of very short pieces are better enjoyed when you can read each one multiple times and savor them between other things. It is because of my method that I discovered how carefully the editors assembled the shorts, how one follows another in theme or one small detail that carries over. Brilliant, but I found it hard to connect with some of them. I think when you put a bunch of short pieces in with "The Fine Art of Sighing" by Bernard Cooper, it is a reminder of how very difficult it is to write something that is short and perfect. But Cooper does, so the others are left competing with his accomplishment.
Because of this, I'd say only a handful of the many short pieces in this anthology are of the five star variety. Many are 3, or 4.
A few I really liked:
"The Stories Tell the Land" by Deborah Tall and "Natural Edges" by John Lane.
Because of this, I'd say only a handful of the many short pieces in this anthology are of the five star variety. Many are 3, or 4.
A few I really liked:
"The Stories Tell the Land" by Deborah Tall and "Natural Edges" by John Lane.
August 11, 2008
How do I review a book I enjoyed so much that moments after reading through it once I immediately started back on some of the shorts I really enjoyed and found inspiration from?
what words can I choose to describe a book that proves to me that essays need not be the length of the average New Yorker article to be powerful?
The essays chosen and the order they were laid out (which the editors stress is not the way one needs to read them in) left me with a braid of stories, of thoughts, of words which left me yearning for more.
I hope one day to write and pull my writings together with half the skill displayed within these soft covers.
Please go find this book and read it. I suggest purchasing it (or having a wonderful friend gift it to you) as you might not want to return it to the library.
what words can I choose to describe a book that proves to me that essays need not be the length of the average New Yorker article to be powerful?
The essays chosen and the order they were laid out (which the editors stress is not the way one needs to read them in) left me with a braid of stories, of thoughts, of words which left me yearning for more.
I hope one day to write and pull my writings together with half the skill displayed within these soft covers.
Please go find this book and read it. I suggest purchasing it (or having a wonderful friend gift it to you) as you might not want to return it to the library.
February 27, 2025
The Short format makes for a breezy read you can pick up and put down at a moments notice. Not all Shorts within are successful, but on the whole are good. I was surprised at how smoothly they were organized, props to the editors.
March 15, 2021
The writing was good, but the content and style did not capture my attention. I love creative nonfiction, but this book wasn't for me.
May 17, 2007
The premise behind this collection is that, for whatever reason, a collective effort at compression in nonfiction has suddenly occurred. The editors note that in some ways this is nothing new (E.B. White, among others, penned short essays decades ago), but they are convinced that a cultural trend is developing, one spurred, at least in part, by the frenetic advances of our technological age and their effect on our attention spans. This trend, they claim, results in writers producing various snippets of prose: lyric pieces, sentient scenes, musings, etc. They dub this nonfiction form the “short” and define it as self-contained pieces under 2000 words. The editors hail it as a form (the short) within a form (creative nonfiction), and marvel at the innovation and experimentation on the part of writers, both new and established, within this new mode. I don’t know about any of that, but the fact remains that this book does indeed contain pieces under 2000 words by writers both famous and obscure, and, apparently, they’re keeping at it, as Judith Kitchen has edited at least one other collection of short prose since this volume appeared in 1996. Whatever the reasons behind this mass movement of abridgement, the end results are largely the same as with any other type of writing: some of it is good and some of it is bad, and these judgments are largely a subjective affair. With respect to the pieces contained herein, I found some of them to be good and some of them to be bad. By good, I mean pleasurable, innovative, thought-provoking, etc. By bad, I mean self-indulgent, inconsequential, overblown (ironic, in that the overblowing was accomplished in less than 2000 words), or anything written by Terry Tempest Williams. This impulse to shrink may be driven by as grand a notion as “cultural trending,” or it may merely be a mass effort to increase chances for publication, as journals and magazines seem more apt to publish shorter pieces these days (which, I suppose, could be considered a trend, cultural or otherwise). In any event, the result is writing produced by authors, some of which is good and some of which is bad.
April 28, 2016
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: creative non-fiction is great.
But this book is not.
Why? Partly because In Short is too freakin' long.
There are 90 selections and at least 35 could have been cut out as being what they are -- vastly inferior to the rest of the book. Those 35 to 40 selections fall into these categories:
* those that are actually edited from longer works -- and you really need to read the longer work in order to get the full impact
* those that are written in a choppy yet pretentious style. So that. Really. Everything feels heavy. Like a rock on the noggin'. REALLY. PRETENTIOUS. Stuff.
* those that were just too short to make any kind of impact. "Wham, bam, thank you ma'am" and then, well, is that there is?
And that's all there is folks.
But this book is not.
Why? Partly because In Short is too freakin' long.
There are 90 selections and at least 35 could have been cut out as being what they are -- vastly inferior to the rest of the book. Those 35 to 40 selections fall into these categories:
* those that are actually edited from longer works -- and you really need to read the longer work in order to get the full impact
* those that are written in a choppy yet pretentious style. So that. Really. Everything feels heavy. Like a rock on the noggin'. REALLY. PRETENTIOUS. Stuff.
* those that were just too short to make any kind of impact. "Wham, bam, thank you ma'am" and then, well, is that there is?
And that's all there is folks.
July 13, 2017
This book has 100 short essays on a wide variety of subjects. I only liked 19 of them, but if you like essays, you will probably find something in this book that appeals to you.
I liked the following, in random order:
1. All-Out Effort by Reginald Gibbons
2. Volar by Judith Ortiz Cofer
3. Enough Jam for a Lifetime by Maxine Kumin
4. An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams
5. Sunday by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
6. My Children Explain the Big Issues by Will Baker
7. A Voice for the Lonely by Stephen Corey
8. Fernando and Marisela by Bruce Berger
9. MRI by Jim DeCamp
10. White Men Can't Drum by Sherman Alexie
11. Locker Room Talk by Stephen Dunn
12. On the Street by Vivian Gornick
13. Ice Cream by Susana Kaysen
14. The Complaint by William Matthews
15. Modern Times by Lawrence Weschler
16. Nostalgia for Everything by Andrei Codrescu
17. One Human Hand by Li-Young Lee
18. Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders
19. The Fine Art of Sighing by Bernard Cooper
I liked the following, in random order:
1. All-Out Effort by Reginald Gibbons
2. Volar by Judith Ortiz Cofer
3. Enough Jam for a Lifetime by Maxine Kumin
4. An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams
5. Sunday by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
6. My Children Explain the Big Issues by Will Baker
7. A Voice for the Lonely by Stephen Corey
8. Fernando and Marisela by Bruce Berger
9. MRI by Jim DeCamp
10. White Men Can't Drum by Sherman Alexie
11. Locker Room Talk by Stephen Dunn
12. On the Street by Vivian Gornick
13. Ice Cream by Susana Kaysen
14. The Complaint by William Matthews
15. Modern Times by Lawrence Weschler
16. Nostalgia for Everything by Andrei Codrescu
17. One Human Hand by Li-Young Lee
18. Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders
19. The Fine Art of Sighing by Bernard Cooper
June 29, 2017
As is to be expected with collections of any genre of literature there is quite a diverse spread of stories, diverse in style, subject and my appreciation.
There are some genuinely beautiful pieces as the stories wend there way along a loosely contrived journey.
I started reading this with the misconception that it would be simple, what with it being a book of short writings. It is quite an intense read as ideas, cultures, observations and emotions are thrown at you at a quite dizzying pace.
It was well worth reading and later today I'll review my favourite pieces.
There are some genuinely beautiful pieces as the stories wend there way along a loosely contrived journey.
I started reading this with the misconception that it would be simple, what with it being a book of short writings. It is quite an intense read as ideas, cultures, observations and emotions are thrown at you at a quite dizzying pace.
It was well worth reading and later today I'll review my favourite pieces.
July 25, 2017
I often feel like collections kind of fall into two camps. One, where the arrangement is lazy and/or forced, often using very little in way of connecting seperate piece. And the other, a seamless arrangement of pieces that work as a cohesive unit. Fortunately for In Short, it is the later.
Though the essays are from different author and differ in subject matter, they are expertly linked together. Essays spring from the ones proceeding it, only to create new soil for the essay following. Themes are grouped together but not forced together. While you are reading it, it feels as if you are being nudged towards a direction. Maybe to take a second out of life and examine the small, the overlooked.
Some of my personal favorite include:
An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams
Three Yards by Michael Dorris
Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders
Stonehenge and the Louvre Were Cool
Though the essays are from different author and differ in subject matter, they are expertly linked together. Essays spring from the ones proceeding it, only to create new soil for the essay following. Themes are grouped together but not forced together. While you are reading it, it feels as if you are being nudged towards a direction. Maybe to take a second out of life and examine the small, the overlooked.
Some of my personal favorite include:
An Unspoken Hunger by Terry Tempest Williams
Three Yards by Michael Dorris
Buckeye by Scott Russell Sanders
Stonehenge and the Louvre Were Cool
September 29, 2025
I found this book at a thrift shop. It looked interesting enough, but I didn’t have super high hopes. Turns out, it’s one of the best books I’ve read all year. If you’re not a fan of non-fiction, then you probably won’t love this book, which is full of short, non-fiction vignettes written by different authors. But if you love writing for writing’s sake, and would love to read a compilation of talented authors writing non-fiction stories, then please give this a read. I wish this book were the first in a collection, and I could just go on reading these short stories from more talented writers. Maybe one day…
June 4, 2019
This is a collection of short (1-5 pages) non-fiction stories that was required reading for my creative non-fiction writing class; I read the assigned reading, which turned out to be only about 1/3 of the book; i have no desire to finish the rest of it though, since it is rather uninteresting; I gave it two stars because there were a handful of stories that I liked, and it served the purpose of the class, which was to analyze symbolism and writing styles; the majority of the selections though ranged from boring to out right detestable
April 29, 2024
I loved this collection. So many of these stories sing great stories and weave epic tales in ways that are hard to describe without reading them yourselves. Many of them have great endings with a lot of punch to them.
However, this collection had a humongous amount of forgettable and mediocre works, as there are many of this sort. To help you out with that, here's a list of the best ones:
-Around the Corner
-Enough Jam for a Lifetime
-LZ Gator, Vietnam, February 1994
-The Blues Merchant
-Locker Room Talk
-White Men Can't Drum
-Sanctuary
Happy reading!
However, this collection had a humongous amount of forgettable and mediocre works, as there are many of this sort. To help you out with that, here's a list of the best ones:
-Around the Corner
-Enough Jam for a Lifetime
-LZ Gator, Vietnam, February 1994
-The Blues Merchant
-Locker Room Talk
-White Men Can't Drum
-Sanctuary
Happy reading!
October 24, 2017
Only gave it a three because I didn't love all the stories in the book. However, many are pretty awesome.
January 31, 2021
I picked this up after reading an interview with Dinty W. Moore (the editor of Brevity) on what he thought were the top five short-form creative nonfiction books. This was number two in chronological order. It’s flaws are mostly those of elision. If you’re doing flash (or micro) essays why include long essays with portions omitted for space? Great line up of writers. / Hardcover, 01/28/21.
March 5, 2021
I'll be honest, I was bored with a lot of these stories. There were a few I really enjoyed, but I had to read a lot that I didn't. It's a pretty mixed bag.
June 14, 2021
I guess my idea of creative non-fiction (and I was really interested in the "creative" part) is very different from the editors. Many of these pieces were just essays with very little point to them.
November 26, 2022
For CTY. Volar is the best.
February 18, 2023
Interesting eclectic mix of articles that capture the origin of the personal short nonfiction format that has become a mainstay of modern media.
October 21, 2023
As with most collections, some of these were strong and interesting, and others weren't. In the introductory notes, the editors said they didn't organize the stories in a way that could require a subheading or a chapter, but connected threads of stories together, which was actually quite delightful to sleuth out. Connections like military service, an area of the country, a particular person in the writer's life, and other connections linked these stories, one to another, in a clever way that reminded me a little bit of a mix tape.
My favorites in the collection - the ones I was engaged with most and flagged to share with others in the future - include:
- Enough Jam for a Lifetime
- An Unspoken Hunger
- Last Shot
- In Praise of the Humble Comma
- The Usual Story
- Crazy Horse
- Good Use for Bad Weather
- Grubby
- Mute Dancers: How to Watch a Hummingbird
My favorites in the collection - the ones I was engaged with most and flagged to share with others in the future - include:
- Enough Jam for a Lifetime
- An Unspoken Hunger
- Last Shot
- In Praise of the Humble Comma
- The Usual Story
- Crazy Horse
- Good Use for Bad Weather
- Grubby
- Mute Dancers: How to Watch a Hummingbird
April 5, 2012
I'm fascinated by the genre, but somehow this collection didn't quite carry it to the end. Might be my dislike of nature writing, but also perhaps shorts should be enjoyed in limited quantities. Just a thought...
July 6, 2012
Was looking for nonfiction to use with my regular-level high school students. I wasn't able to find anything useful in here so far. I'm looking for something of high interest, am this is disappointing so far.
October 3, 2012
There are quite a few gems in this collection of short (less than 2,000 words) essays that cover a wide variety of topics from top notch writers. Highly recommended, for both the lovely writing and the insight they provide. Thanks, Christopher! :)
August 1, 2014
Most of the authors delivered true artistry with their short nonfiction work in this collection. The choice of words and story architecture had to be perfect in order to render a story in a limited number of words.
September 8, 2014
In short, (ha that wasn't intentional at first, but I am leaving it there.) I loved every one of these essays. It shows the true form of how these types of works are written and also why these writers are indeed good a what they do.
October 21, 2015
I gave this 5 stars because of Pico Iyer's "In Praise of the Humble Comma," which is hands down the best essay I have ever read.
I also greatly enjoyed the rest of it as well.
I also greatly enjoyed the rest of it as well.
August 12, 2012
These are excellent, short essays. Impressive.
December 24, 2012
Beautiful language, but it was hard to discern the point of some essays.
December 29, 2015
Really? Just a treasure of a book. Amazing how so much can be conveyed in just a page or two. Some of these stories actually made me cry. A keeper!
May 22, 2018
While I didn't enjoy some of the writings in this book, it had many I loved. Some had beautiful styles of describing full flavors of emotions. I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews