Guest host Neil Gaiman introduces two tales of illusion.

Guest host Neil Gaiman introduces two American classics. 

Guest host John Lithgow introduces two stories with strong women.

Guest host John Lithgow introduces two stories about compulsion. 

On this show we look, comically and seriously, at readers and writers, with guest host John Lithgow.

Guest host John Lithgow raises the curtain on five comic tales, classic and cutting-edge. 

Zadie Smith turns back time in this story of a memorable chance encounter between two veterans down on their luck. 

Shame, longing, and passion lie beneath the surface lives of the characters in these three stories. 

Today’s program features three stories that explore both the physical spaces we inhabit, and how those spaces are tied to the more mysterious, emotional places in our lives. 

We look at the meaning of the stuff in our lives.

SELECTED SHORTS celebrates its late host and creator Isaiah Sheffer in this special program hosted by Colum McCann. 

Paris in the 1920s and 1930s saw an explosion of painting, sculpture, music, and literature, and helped create a Bohemian lifestyle on the Left Bank.  This program features some of the literary figures who helped define the era, and more.

SHORTS collaborated with the public radio show Planet Money to bring you two stories about spending and earning, and one about compulsory consumerism. 

An old-fashioned waitress, and a poet at high tide, in stories by an American master and a contemporary Irish writer.

“I have missed my turnings on strange mountain roads in the early hours of the morning because I was too carried away by listening to someone…reading Poe stories.”

Israeli author Etgar Keret joins literary commentator Hannah Tinti for a look at three stories about strange encounters and new beginnings.

SELECTED SHORTS celebrates One Story Magazine’s tenth anniversary with three works by favorite authors. 

The new season of SELECTED SHORTS continues with a program bringing a touch of magic in two stories from contemporary authors.

The new season of SELECTED SHORTS begins with a program focusing on the mystery and allure of objects. In Steven Millhauser’s “In the Reign of Harad IV” a court miniaturist longs to create smaller and smaller worlds.  Millhauser has commented on the fact that he moved from novels to short fiction—a reverse of the usual trend for authors—saying, “it’s as if the novel were a kind of preparation for the rigorous pleasures of the shorter form. For me, the shortness of a great story is part of its greatness.”

Praying to God, playing God, and mysterious ways in four tales comic and strange