Always looking to find new short story authors who are masters of the form. Among my favorites: William Trevor James Joyce (Dubliners) Alistair MacLeod Anyone want to throw some names my way?
Flannery O'Connor Raymond Carver Ernest Hemingway Anton Chekhov W. Somerset Maugham T.C. Boyle Edgar Allan Poe Rudyard Kipling
Stephen King has written several short stories that I've enjoyed far more than I've enjoyed his longer works. My absolute favorite short story author, though, is Edgar Allan Poe. He's a beautiful writer and never fails to ignite my imagination. While not a true short story, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach is absolutely amazing. It's a very short work to the point where I don't think it even falls into the "novella" category, but it's also longer than the average short story.
To offer some contemporary authors: Nathan Ballingrud Ottessa Moshfegh Junot Díaz ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is fucking brilliant) David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews With Hideous Men) Jhumpa Lahiri
Katherine Porter Virginia Woolf Dorothy Allison Lindsay Hunter Amelia Gray Lydia Davis Raymond Carver John Barthe Robert Coover R. Frank Delaney Earnest Gaines
In addition to those mentioned: Guy de Maupassant Franz Kafka Jorges Luis Borges HP Lovecraft Mavis Gallant Angela Carter John Cheever Julio Cortazar Katherine Mansfield Roald Dahl ...and best of all... Nikolai Gogol
I'm more familiar with genre fiction than general fiction. But I think a couple of writers that transcend their genres and can be enjoyed by most readers and have already been mentioned, are Jorge Luis Borges and Ray Bradbury. Borges is mainly magical realism I guess. There is nothing else like him and his stuff is worth checking out for anyone. Bradbury is more speculative fiction. His works have this poetic quality and enthusiasm to them that you rarely find. I think both have really inspired me personally when it comes to writing my own stories, setting the high water mark. Shirley Jackson is another great author. I think looking for anthologies with various authors is a good idea too. You end up with hits and misses but can see a lot of different styles and methods all in one book. For example, I've been reading through the "Weird Compendium" and it has helped me expand my view of my favorite genre and given me ideas for different story structures.
For magical realism you could also look at some work by Gabriel García Márquez. 100 Years Of Solitude is a great book, but he also did fantastic shorter works. I’ll also second the mention of Shirley Jackson, start with The Lottery, Hangsman and We Have Always Lived In the Castle. And as long as one Jackson has been mentioned I’ll give another, Shelley Jackson. She’s mostly experimental and cross genre fiction, but she’s definitely a wild ride. For her Skin Project, she recruited about 1500 people, assigned them a specific word to be tattooed wherever they wanted, then took video clips and arranged them in a montage. http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skin-video.html She vowed to never change it or reproduce it in any other format, but George Lucas said pretty much the same this about Star Wars. Half-Life, and Patchwork Girl are a good place to start reading.
Jodi Angle. Laura Van Den Berg. Joan Wickersham. Sean Ennis. These are a few of my contemporary favorites. All write mind-blowing short stories.
