Lorrie Moore books

Lorrie Moore is an American short story writer and novelist whose collections, including Self-Help (1985) and Birds of America (1998), have made her one of the most celebrated voices in American short fiction. She teaches at Vanderbilt University and has won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her work in the short story form.

Anthologies

Title Published Buy on Amazon
New Women and New Fiction: Short Stories Since the Sixties 1986 Buy
The Best American Short Stories 1991 1991 Buy
The Literary Traveller 1994 Buy
Granta 54 1996 Buy
The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories About Childhood 1998 Buy
Ploughshares Fall, 1998 1998 Buy
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction 1999 Buy
Wonderful Town 2000 Buy
40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology 2000 Buy
A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology 2002 Buy
PEN America Issue 4: Fact/Fiction 2002 Buy
The Eloquent Short Story: An Anthology of Narrative Styles 2004 Buy
The Best American Short Stories 2004 2004 Buy
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules 2005 Buy
The New Granta Book of the American Short Story 2007 Buy
Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts 2012 Buy

Children’s

Title Published Buy on Amazon
The Forgotten Helper 1988 Buy

Collections

Title Published Buy on Amazon
I Know Some Things 1992 Buy
See What Can Be Done 2018 Buy

Non-Fiction

Title Published Buy on Amazon
How To Become A Writer 2015 Buy

Short Stories/Novellas

Title Published Buy on Amazon
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? 1994 Buy
Vissi d’Arte 2014 Buy
Real Estate 2016 Buy

Short Story Collections

Title Published Buy on Amazon
Self-Help 1985 Buy
Like Life 1990 Buy
Birds of America: Stories 1998 Buy
Collected Stories 2008 Buy
The Collected Stories 2008 Buy
Bark 2014 Buy

Standalone Novels

Title Published Buy on Amazon
Anagrams 1986 Buy
A Gate at the Stairs 2009 Buy
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home 2023 Buy

Lorrie Moore published her first collection, Self-Help, in 1985 and introduced a voice that felt immediately distinctive. The second-person instructions of those early stories — “You are in the airport. You are waiting.” — had a wry, sorrowful quality that influenced a generation of American writers. She followed it with Like Life (1990) and then Birds of America (1998), which became her most commercially successful collection.

Her three novels, Anagrams (1986), A Gate at the Stairs (2009), and I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (2023), are spaced far enough apart that each one arrives as an event. A Gate at the Stairs, set in a Midwestern university town in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, is widely considered her best long-form work. Moore’s fiction is marked by wordplay, grief, and a particular understanding of how funny and devastating ordinary American life can be at the same time.


Frequently Asked Questions

How many books has Lorrie Moore written?

Lorrie Moore has written 32 books across seven series.

What was Lorrie Moore's first book?

Lorrie Moore’s first book is Self-Help, published in 1985.

What is Lorrie Moore best known for?

She is best known for her short story collections, particularly Self-Help (1985), which pioneered the use of the second-person voice in fiction, and Birds of America (1998), which was a New York Times bestseller — rare for a story collection — and won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize.

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