A host of short story collections photographed against a red background

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Reading lists

12 short story collections to sink into

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

Sharp, expansive, and polyphonic, a propulsive novel rendered with the wit and care present in all of Thompson-Spires’ work

That Nafissa Thompson-Spires can conjure so much atmosphere in so few pages is both a feat and a mystery. From oil money to the rodeo, electric love and sudden death, Oklahoma positively blooms with violence and mercy alike. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford unfolds with rare economy and force

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from ­­­­­­the University of Illinois. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine’s “The Cut,” The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, and The 1619 Project, among other publications. 
 
In addition to a debut novel with Scribner, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Rich Milford, her young adult debut is forthcoming with Make Me a World (Penguin Random House). She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Grant and a 2019 Whiting Award.

Four wives. Five murders. One very bad, very dead husband. 
 
Rich Milford is dead. At last. 
 
In the Black town of Newville, Oklahoma, Rich Milford has spent his life doing exactly as he pleases. A moonshiner, womaniser and self-styled prophet, he runs his eccentric household with rigid rules, strange beliefs and casual cruelty. 
 
Now he’s been found dead. 
 
At his funeral, the town gathers to speculate. The obvious suspects are the women closest to Rich: his four wives – Lally, Sophronia, Georgette and Vivianne – along with Alberta, the cook who has held the Milford household together for decades. Each of these women has a story to tell. Each believes, with absolute certainty, that she is the one who killed him. 
 
As their accounts unfold, they reveal a household thick with secrets: forbidden love, suppressed rage, poisoned pies, stolen money, superstition, desire and grief. With each woman’s story, the truth splinters further, and the idea of a single version of events begins to collapse. Threaded through all of this is the voice of Newville itself – a sharp, gossipy, communal chorus that watches, judges and ultimately decides what justice will look like.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Outstanding... Smart, witty and so very well written

The level of detail that goes into each of Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s sentences is astonishing, and the worlds that she can create in just a few words are mind-blowing. Ready yourself for this collection. It will change the way you look at writing, and at how you see things

The kind of collection that makes you shake your head in delight. Her voice is fresh-laundry-clean: I have not read anything like it in years. The prose is cunning. It appears simple, but the overall effect is powerful. Her stories feel simultaneously like the poke of a stick and a comforting balm; a smack followed by a kiss. I’m so into it.

Vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive, these stories by the vastly talented Thompson-Spires create a compelling surface tension made of equal parts scepticism towards human nature and intense fondness of it. Located on the big questions, they are full of heart

Every so often, a voice comes along that knocks you sideways; this debut collection of short stories was one such moment. From the first page there’s an electricity and freshness to the voice that grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let me go

Thompson-Spires' stories are dark, have a cutting sense of humour, and are entertaining and essential

[Thompson-Spires] writes satire of the Paul Beatty school, her humour as daring as it is disarming. This is a firecracker of a book, sizzling with politics, but it's also a triumph of storytelling: intelligent, acerbic and ingenious

Witty, mischievous... These coolly ironic and grimly funny tales brim with snap and verve, and this is a debut collection of daring and aplomb

Her electric style is extrovert, erudite and hugely entertaining, despite the often grim subject matter... Thompson-Spires invigoratingly hits the mark... you end the collection greedy to read whatever is coming next from this unmistakable talent

Superbly witty... The topics she takes on are often deadly serious, but every story flashes grim humor. She is also a brutally sharp observer

[Thompson-Spires] writes with complete control, building a story in the precise shape of her anger. Her sentences intertwine and double back on themselves, and each one stings

Heads of the Colored People is a delightful, disarming, deliciously diabolical collection. Every other page, there's a razor-sharp turn, a surprise that makes you laugh, think, rethink, or shiver

For the freshest voice in literature, look no further than Nafissa Thompson-Spires blisteringly clever short story collection, Heads of the Colored People… Sometimes, a voice comes around that is so singular, so funny, so wholly original, that you go back and reread each story once you finish it… In each of these humorous, intelligent vignettes, Thompson-Spires explores aspects of being Black and middle-class in today’s America. This is a special collection. Buy it so you can read it more than once

Intricate, playful... Thompson-Spires crafts a narrative voice which always walks one step ahead, sometimes turning to us with a wink, before getting back to what really needs to be said... The minutiae of her characters’ lives are a joy to read for the purity of the unremarkable, and yet there is nothing light about her subject matter. Thompson-Spires’ juxtaposing of small normalities against larger, more crippling truths powerfully draws attention to the oppressively racialised realities of her characters’ lives... A much longed-for portrayal of a black normality

The stories here are dazzling, wise, wicked and tender. Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ debut is a knockout

Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble and Magic for Beginners

Nafissa Thompson-Spires pulls no punches in her boundary-pushing short-story collection ... With gallows humour and brazen originality, the author plunges us deep into the interiorities of quirkily indelible characters ... Thompson-Spires's virtuosity is breathtaking ... Funny, smart and of the moment, this electrifying debut marks the emergence of a daring talent

From the opening sentences of the opening story in Nafissa Thompson-Spires's debut collection, Heads of the Colored People, we're in a world of humour, provocation and deep reflection

Nafissa Thompson-Spires creates characters whose fates become, in the space of just a few pages, crucially important to us. She's intelligent, she's funny, and at her best she's phenomenally good

Every once in a while a book comes around that fills a need — that communicates ideas so effectively and humanely its social value leaps off the page. Heads, the debut of Nafissa Thompson-Spires, is such a book ... Stories run the gamut from intimate to uproarious to devastating ... Writing in versatile prose and with a penchant for naturalistic dialogue...she weaves timeless human conflict into a quietly political tapestry.

An unusually intricate matrix of clear-eyed observation and devastating revelation about what it means to be a human being alive on this aching, raucous, unjust planet in the early 21st century. It is also, often, extremely funny, and is very smart on every page and gorgeously, rewardingly varied in its sentences and forms

Nafissa Thompson-Spires has taken the best of what Toni Cade Bambara, Paul Beatty, Morgan Parker...do plus a whole lot of something we've never seen in American literature, blended it all together and given us one of the finest short story collections I've ever read. The super thin lines between terror, intimacy, humor and hubris are masterfully toed, jumped and ultimately redrawn in the most exciting and soulful fiction I've read this century. The nation needed Heads of Colored People 40 years ago. Thankfully, we Nafissa Thompson-Spires gave it to us now.

By turns hilarious, charming, ingenious, and heartbreaking, Thompson-Spires’ debut is well worth checking out

What a true pleasure it is to spend time with this alive mind thinking so openly and interestingly on the page about character and culture and storytelling and one’s everchanging role in it all. This book made me laugh many times, and I also sometimes stopped midpage to read a paragraph aloud just to relish how Thompson-Spires was moving her story along. A marvel of a debut

Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Darkly humorous and incredibly moving, "Heads of the Colored People" is a wonderful collection of short stories ... The book couldn't be more timely — and even the stories that seem light-hearted on the surface are, at their center, incredibly intelligent reflections on race, identity, and blackness. Nafissa Thompson-Spires has written a masterpiece.

This is one of the best short story debuts I’ve read in my whole life. It’s that simple. Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the real deal. Straight up, no hyperbole. Read a couple pages and recognize

Clever, cruel, hilarious, heartbreaking, and at times simply ingenious

A dazzling mix of dark, funny and wicked stories about black identity in the so-called post-racial era. Reminiscent of the catchy intelligence of Paul Beatty...this debut audaciously tackles race and identity politics

Stuffed with invention… Thompson-Spires proves herself a trenchant humorist with an eye for social nuance

Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ stories fearlessly tackle broad issues of race, identity politics, and the body, while never losing sight of the intricately-faceted individuals inhabiting those bodies. She writes with a precision of psychological insight that is both moving and profound. Dignified, controlled, and, above all, original: Thompson-Spires is an important new voice in contemporary fiction

[A] dazzling collection... Transgressive and wildly funny, Heads of the Colored People announces a major new talent

Tremendous... One of the best books of the year... a breakthrough in literary fiction

With devastating insight and remarkable style, Nafissa Thompson-Spires explores what it means to come to terms with one’s body, one’s family, one’s future. The eleven vignettes in Heads of the Colored People elevate the unusual and expose the unseen, forming an original—and urgent—portrait of American life

Allegra Hyde, author of Of This New World

This short story collection is filled with characters that will your win your heart in a matter of words. This book is a must-read

Nafissa Thompson-Spires has a way of staring intense, awkward, comic, and sorrowful situations right in the face. There's no escaping her honest gaze. Heads of the Colored People is a necessary and powerful new collection with, thankfully, not a dull sentence to be found

From petty classroom moms to a young girl who is contemplating taking her own life, these stories are deep and touching. We promise you’ll fall in love with this book, just like we did

This collection resonates on many frequencies. There are direct links between characters in several of the stories, many of whom are foils for each other, and their nuances are sure to strike a chord with any reader who’s struggled with insecurity and a search for self… Thompson-Spires writes with grace, a lightly bitter humor, and a real eye for a detail that calls attention to the simultaneous reality and fictionality of each story… A profound and truly enjoyable collection

Bubbly and sardonic, full of sly twists and dramatic reveals

A bold new voice, at once insolently sardonic ... Thompson-Spires flashes fearsome gifts for quirky characterisation, irony-laden repartee and edgy humour

[An] impressive debut collection… [Nafissa Thompson-Spires’] electric style is extrovert, erudite and hugely entertaining… [an] unmistakable talent

A fresh take on what it means to be black in today’s America

Furiously contemporary, Heads of the Colored People feels like a bulletin from the world delivered in the last couple of seconds

Superb… This is a firecracker of a book, sizzling with politics, but it’s also a triumph of storytelling: intelligent, acerbic and ingenious

Characters’ observations are delivered with clarity and precision; their responses to tragic situations are often filled with humour… [Heads of the Colored People] explore the internal and external tensions of moving through life in a body of colour

A satirical and daring collection of short stories exploring black life from one of America's rising stars. 
 
 'Makes you shake your head in delight... Her stories feel simultaneously like the poke of a stick and a comforting balm; a smack followed by a kiss. I’m so into it' Bim Adewunmi, Guardian 
 
Heads of the Colored People interrogates our supposedly post-racial era to wicked and devastating effect, exposing the violence that threatens black Americans, no matter their apparent success. 
 
A teenager is insidiously bullied as her YouTube following soars; an assistant professor finds himself losing a subtle war against his office mate; a nurse is worn down by the demand for her skills as a funeral singer. And across a series of stories, a young woman grows up, negotiating and renegotiating her identity. 
 
This electric collection of short stories marks the arrival of a remarkable writer and an urgent new voice. 
 
*Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2019* 
 
*Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019*

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Praise for Heads of the Colored People

Outstanding... Smart, witty and so very well written

The level of detail that goes into each of Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s sentences is astonishing, and the worlds that she can create in just a few words are mind-blowing. Ready yourself for this collectio ...

The kind of collection that makes you shake your head in delight. Her voice is fresh-laundry-clean: I have not read anything like it in years. The prose is cunning. It appears simple, but ...

Outstanding... Smart, witty and so very well written

The level of detail that goes into each of Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s sentences is astonishing, and the worlds that she can create in just a few words are mind-blowing. Ready yourself for this collectio ...

The kind of collection that makes you shake your head in delight. Her voice is fresh-laundry-clean: I have not read anything like it in years. The prose is cunning. It appears simple, but ...

Outstanding... Smart, witty and so very well written

The level of detail that goes into each of Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s sentences is astonishing, and the worlds that she can create in just a few words are mind-blowing. Ready yourself for this collectio ...

The kind of collection that makes you shake your head in delight. Her voice is fresh-laundry-clean: I have not read anything like it in years. The prose is cunning. It appears simple, but ...

Books by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Articles featuring Nafissa Thompson-Spires

12 short story collections to sink into

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