Autobiographical Short Fiction

[Sonya]

Hello Everyone -- I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations/suggestions for your favorite short stories which are autobiographically-based. Or even short fiction authors who you know generally base their stories on their own lives. I'm looking for contemporary examples, mostly. Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge!

[Beej]

Early John Updike shorts are almost all based on his life.

[Sheila]

Tim O'Brien's The Things They carried is one of my favoriate collections of shorts and some are based on his expereinces from his time in the Vietnam War

[Rosana]

Canadian writer Alice Munro’s collection The View from Castle Rock is loosely - and not so losely - based on 3 generations of her family. As she explains in the book’s Foreword:

...the part of this book that might be called family history has expended into fiction, but always within the outline of a true narrative.

[Sonya]

Thank you so much, everyone. Great suggestions. (Keep 'em coming!)

[Andy]

The Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway and
Hot Water Music by Bukowski. I don't think either of these is strictly autobiographical short fiction, but as the Amazon page for Nick Adams Stories says, they closely parallel the author's life. Bukowski is awfully bleak, in my opinion. The Nick Adams Stories are great...

Somebody asked the very same question here:
http://languageisavirus.com/questions...
The answers on that website:
1. Ernest Hemingway. Look for the Nick Adams stories. They are all based around his life.
2. Charles Bukowski
. Any of his novels and short stories are autobiographical.
3. Andre Dubus. All of his short stories are based, to a certain degree, on his life.
4. John Fante
5. Richard Brautigan’s short stories. He has a surrealist twist to his stories, though.
6. Tobias Wolff…In Pharaoh’s Army (this is a novel/memoir in the form of connected stories/vignettes.
7. Tim O’Brien. The Things They carried. They are short stories based on his service in Vietnam.

I guess the examples above are not all that contemporary. There is a short story group here on GoodReads that seems to discuss contemporary short stories (they don't really discuss the stories, they just discuss books and authors) but they might have some more ideas for you.
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1...

So why do you ask, Sonya?

[Sonya]

Thank you, Andy! Great resources.

I am teaching an Autobiographical Fiction class (a workshop) and am looking for good examples for students.