Ten top story collections by women

Sara Batkie's stories have been published in various journals, received mention in the 2011 Best American Short Stories anthology, and, most recently, honored with a 2017 Pushcart Prize. Her story collection Better Times won the 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. One of ten "story collections by women you should read right now" she tagged at Publishers Weekly:

What I Didn't See by Karen Joy Fowler

Jim Shepard is often held up, rightfully, as a paragon of the “deep-dive” writer, whose subjects span the whole globe and bounds of human history. I’d like to posit Karen Joy Fowler as his female counterpart, sharing his omnivorous curiosity about the world but, dare I say, a little less fussy about the research. Fowler is best known as the author of bestselling novels like We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club, but this collection, which includes two Nebula winners, provides ample surprises in its pages, from a compassionate portrait of Edwin Booth, haunted by the actions of his brother John Wilkes, to the eerily seductive voice of an immortality cult’s true believer. Through it all Fowler pings between darkness and light with admirable ease.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue