African American Short Stories

In Dale's Tales, Dale Guy Madison takes young listeners on a journey through a series of African-American stories and folktales. From the humor of How God Created Butterflies to the magical realism of Flying Away to Freedom, Dale's retellings of classic folktales will delight and inspire. The collection also includes Dale's brand-new story Three Heads of Hair.

A northern white couple has relocated to the South to operate a vineyard on a North Carolina plantation. There, they pass their idle hours listening to the stories of one Uncle Julius, who has a deep knowledge of the land. These stories, however, are more than mere entertainments. They all have their time and place, and they offer not only a quiet commentary on the events of the day but also a deeper reckoning with the plantation’s disturbing past.

More virtues from Joy. Remember her free-spirit nature as she travels along her path to being of purpose? Well, here are more of her antics. Being able to move into and out of situations allows her to release the yuck and capture the yummy!

DeShawn Watts has always followed the rules and obeyed law enforcement for as long as he could remember. But why does a life in the suburbs with a loving wife, a beautiful daughter, and a nice job feel so hollow whenever DeShawn talks to his jailbird brother, Darnell? Respectability is a short story detailing the lives of Black men and asking what it really means to be free today in America.

Headlined by New York Times best-seller Carl Weber, three authors bring listeners tales of power, greed, and ambition set in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods.

Negus: A Compilation of African-American Science Fiction short stories and flash fiction will satisfy conspiracy theorists, sci-fi lovers, and urban fiction fans. Whether you're obsessed with aliens, astronomy, pineal gland decalcification, crystals, or life before birth and after death, Negus hits a home run with out-of-this-world content that'll leave you in deep thought about life and this planet we call home.

An enthralling collection of short stories based on Dwight's own family history. He takes us through the lives of African Americans and Native Americans in the early parts of the United States. A must listen.

On the heels of the best seller success of her novel The Wedding, Dorothy West, the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that explore both the realism of everyday life, and the fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one woman's life in a mythic time.

In his sharply crafted, unnerving first collection of speculative short stories, Courttia Newland envisages an alternate future as lived by the African diaspora. Robots driven by all-too-human urges set out to colonize space; Kill Parties roam the streets of a postapocalyptic world; a matriarchal race of mer creatures depends on interbreeding with mortals to survive; mysterious seeds appear in cities across the world, growing into the likeness of people in their vicinity.

Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible.

Proverbs for the People is an astounding collection of contemporary African-American fiction, featuring stories by such well known authors as Pearl Cleage, Omar Tyree, Margaret Johnson-Hodge, Travis Hunter, Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown, Gwynne Forster, Edward Jackson and Vicki L. Andrews. These widely varied stories resonate with the power and wisdom of the ages, speaking of universal truths that will heal and guide the wayward spirit.

Eric Walrond was a singular voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and Tropic Death is his most famous work - a collection that highlights his particular strength as a writer of short fiction. Over the course of these ten stories, Walrond vividly details the punishing realities of life and labor across the Caribbean, and yet the overall effect is far from grim. These are unsentimental yet startlingly beautiful portraits of the migrant experience, full of distinctive voices striving for an audience in a seemingly implacable world.

The first collection in the ongoing series of fantasy stories from the world of Esowon. You'll find dastardly beasts, tortured monks, and unexpected lovers in a set of tales that'll transport you to lands lost to time. Delve into these companion novellas to The Kishi, an African fantasy based on Angola folklore.

A stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts by the brilliant African American artist and filmmaker.

The nine tales in Give My Love to the Savages illuminate the multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience. Chris Stuck traverses the dividing lines, and attempts to create meaning from them in unique and unusual ways.

Vega’s rocky introduction to the music industry leaves her second-guessing the decision she’s made to follow her dreams and her first love from New York to Los Angeles. Borne’s alarming distance has caused her eyes and interest to wander onto someone new, someone bittersweet...Leigh Knight.

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

Critics have compared her work to that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but J. California Cooper has a warm, witty style that’s definitely her own. Each of her short stories is a gem of downhome wisdom, polished with a bit of gossip, some heartbreak, and lots of humor.

Finally available after three decades, a lost classic of the Harlem Renaissance that Langston Hughes acclaimed for its "hard poetic beauty". Eric Walrond (1898 - 1966), in his only book, injected a profound Caribbean sensibility into black literature. His work was closest to that of Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston with its striking use of dialect and its insights into the daily lives of the people around him.

Poet Jean Toomer’s short-story and poetry collection.