945 to modern day[edit]

Following World War II the artistic range, and amount of writers, of short stories grew
significantly.[22] Due in part to frequent contributions from John O'Hara, The New Yorker would
demonstrate substantial influence, as a weekly short story publication, for more than half a
century.[23] Shirley Jackson's story, "The Lottery", published in 1948, elicited the strongest
response in the magazine's history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the last 1940s
included John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford, and Eudora Welty. Cheever is best
known for "The Swimmer" (1964) which beautifully blends realism and surrealism. J.D.
Salinger's Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery
O'Connor's well-known story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1955) reinvigorated the Southern
Gothic style. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of
the 1960s. Philip Roth and Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie
Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" (1961) adopted a consciously feminist perspective. James
Baldwin's collection Going to Meet the Man (1965) told stories of African-American life. Frank
O'Connor's The Lonely Voice, an exploration of the short story, appeared in 1963. Wallace
Stegner's short stories are primarily set in the American West. Science fiction stories with a
special poetic touch was a genre developed with great popular success by Ray
Bradbury. Stephen King published many short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after.
King's interest is in the supernatural and macabre. The 1970s saw the rise of the postmodern
short story in the works of Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Traditionalists including John
Updike and Joyce Carol Oates maintained a significant influence on the form. Minimalism gained
widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Raymond Carver and Ann
Beattie.[citation needed] Carver helped usher in an "extreme minimalist aesthetic" and expand the scope
of the short story, as did Lydia Davis, through her idiosyncratic and laconic style.[24]
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is one of the most famous writers of short stories in
the Spanish language. "The Library of Babel" (1941) and "The Aleph" (1945) handle difficult
subjects like infinity. Borges won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths", published
in the August 1948 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Two of the most representative writers of
the Magical realism genre are also widely known Argentinian short story writers: Adolfo Bioy
Casares and Julio Cortázar. The Nobel prize laureate author Gabriel García Márquez and the
Uruguay writer Juan Carlos Onetti are other significant magical realist short story writers from
Latin America. Mario Vargas Llosa, also a Nobel prize laureate, has significant short story works.
In the United Kingdom, Daphne du Maurier wrote suspense stories like "The Birds" (1952) and
"Don't Look Now" (1971).
Some of the Bengali short story writers of the post-Tagore and post-Sarat Chandra generation
are Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Manik Bandyopadhyay, Sunil
Gangopadhyay, Mahasweta Devi, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Suchitra
Bhattacharya, Ramapada Chowdhury and Humayun Ahmed. The role of the bi-monthly
magazine Desh (first published in 1933) is imperative in the development of the Bengali short
story. Two of the most popular detective story writers of Bengali literature are Sharadindu
Bandyopadhyay (the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi) and Satyajit Ray (the creator of Feluda). The
canon of Hindi short story was enriched by the contributions of Jaishankar Prasad, Amrita
Pritam, Dharamvir Bharti, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Nirmal Verma, Kamleshwar, Mannu
Bhandari, Harishankar Parsai and others.
In Italy, Italo Calvino published the short story collection Marcovaldo, about a poor man in a city,
in 1963.
In Brazil, the short story became popular among female writers like Clarice Lispector, Lygia
Fagundes Telles, Adélia Prado, who wrote about their society from a feminine viewpoint,
although the genre has great male writers like Dalton Trevisan, Autran Dourado Moacyr
Scliar and Carlos Heitor Cony, too. Also, writing about poverty and the favelas, João
Antonio became a well-known writer. Other post-modern short fiction authors include
writers Hilda Hilst and Caio Fernando Abreu. Detective literature was led by Rubem Fonseca. It
is also necessary to mention João Guimarães Rosa, wrote short stories in the
book Sagarana using a complex, experimental language based on tales of oral tradition.
Portuguese writers like Vergílio Ferreira, Fernando Goncalves Namora, and Sophia de Mello
Breyner Andresen are among the most influential short story writers from 20th-century
Portuguese language literature. Manuel da Silva Ramos is one of the most well-known names
of postmodernism in the country. Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago published a few short
stories, but became popular from his novels.
The Angolan writer José Luandino Vieira is one of the most well-known writers from his country
and has several short stories. José Eduardo Agualusa is also increasingly read in Portuguese-
speaking countries.
Mozambican Mia Couto is a widely known writer of postmodern prose, and he is read even in
non-Portuguese speaking countries. Other Mozambican writers such as Suleiman
Cassamo, Paulina Chiziane, and Eduardo White are gaining popularity with Portuguese-
speakers too.
The Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz is the most well-known author from his
country but has only a few short stories.
Japanese world-known short story writers include Kenzaburō Ōe (Nobel prize winner of
1994), Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami.
Multi-awarded Philippine writer Peter Solis Nery is one of the most famous writers of short stories
in Hiligaynon language. His stories "Lirio" (1998), "Candido" (2007), "Donato Bugtot" (2011), and
"Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios" (2013) are all gold prize winners at the Palanca
Awards of Philippine Literature.