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Oct 13, 2026
What are the roots of the modern short story? New York Review of Books literary critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Gorra joins award-winning author Brenda Wineapple in conversation for the launch of his new book, The Storytellers: Reading the Masterpieces of Nineteenth-Century Short Fiction — a “sweeping, insightful, magisterial yet always engaging” picture of a century’s worth of great tales (Michael Chabon).
Before there was the short story, there was the tale — an elegantly compressed, often fantastical, sometimes gossipy form that took root in centuries-old oral storytelling traditions and blossomed into modern short fiction as we know it. In The Storytellers, Gorra traces the hidden history of a deceptively simple tradition that captivated readers for a century and shaped the way we tell stories today.
Spanning 19th-century Europe and America, Gorra’s ambitious and deeply entertaining book reveals the cultural forces that shaped the imaginations of the original masters of the short story: through brilliant readings of tales by Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Guy de Maupassant, Sarah Orne Jewett, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Anton Chekhov, Gorra shows how works often treated as isolated masterpieces emerge instead as a web in which fantastical gothic ghost stories gradually expand into cool psychological realism.
What makes a story memorable? Why do certain tales linger in the imagination long after they end? Hear Gorra and Wineapple in a sweeping account of the rise of modern fiction. For devoted readers, aspiring writers, and anyone who has ever been captivated by a great story, come rediscover the enduring power of stories — and the writers who transformed them into an art.
“With its unobtrusive rigor and gentle erudition, The Storytellers breathes new life into the European and North American nineteenth-century short story canon. Gorra confirms here his status ― an outstanding scholar who proves to be a gifted storyteller in his own right. Enlightening and an absolute pleasure to read.” — Hernan Diaz
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