Six-Word Stories

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Among his numerous works are the memoir You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (Little, Brown, 2017); the poetry collection Face; the story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, winner of a PEN/Hemingway Award; the young adult book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, for which he received the National Book Award; and the picture book Thunder Boy Jr. In 2010 Alexie received the PEN/Faulkner Award for War Dances, a collection of stories, essays, and poems. He is also a recipient of a 2015 Narrative Storyteller Award. Alexie lives with his family in Seattle.

Photograph by Chase Jarvis.

The Human Comedy

Six-Word Stories

by Sherman Alexie

My ex-wife. My brother. They eloped.

I proposed. She declined. And laughed.

First sex. I came. She didn’t.

Palin wins! By one vote! Whose?




In a correspondence with our editors, Alexie shared some illuminating thoughts about the six-word story form, and we would like to share his inspiration with you:


These six-worders are a cool hybrid. They work in a strict three-act structure, like screenplays. They are often in iambic pentameter, simply because of the word requirements and the absence of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, so they’re poetry. They also rely heavily on that strategic pause between the second and third act. That pause comes from poetry and from stand-up comedy.
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