new + classic short novels by Black authors

Black authors have been a major force in shaping the American book scene, including the world of short novels.

But like any historical list, a lot of major authors aren't included – simply because short novels were never their thing. It can be a little jolting and make a small list like this feel especially slight.

For this list, we plunged into recommendations from Black booksellers, as well the short novels Black authors admire.

Like some of our lists, classics are combined with more recent titles. Here's a few standouts:

• Butter by Gayle Jones. A 2023 collection that includes two novellas as well as ten short stories. "...as a Black woman writer, her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humor, and incisiveness, is unmatched."
• The Free-lance Pallbearer by Ishmael Reed. From 1967, this is Reed's first novel, by "the brightest contributor to American satire since Mark Twain."
• Assembly by Natasha Brown. From 2022, and just 100 pages, Brown's short novel has earned very high praise: "Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway meets Claudia Rankine's Citizen." And this: "A quiet, measured call to revolution...This is the kind of book that doesn't just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible."

Here's our short list of popular short novels by Black authors.

The Shortish Project is an evolving database of new and classic short novels from publishers big and small. Find the latest. Discover hidden gems. Search by author, book title or ISBN here.

Or lean in and do a random scroll through the full Shortish database (600 titles or so)!