In recent years, my consumption of short stories has significantly increased. I now appreciate the short story for its own artistic merit, moving past the idea that it’s less significant than a novel. After reading several novels to start my 2026 reading year, I knew it was time to read a short story collection. Night Hawks by Charles Johnson had been on my bookshelf for a while after I read the excellent story, Occupying Arthur Whitfield, a few years ago.

Night Hawks is a collection of twelve stories that demonstrates Johnson’s versatility, spanning literary and speculative fiction. In his introduction, Johnson writes, It’s a form I’ve practiced every year, partly because I love its equation-like elegance and compression. It has nudged me to create new works of fiction I would never have dreamed of doing—-stories in second-person, third-person, first-person; tales that stretch from Athens, India, and America’s slavery era to modern-day America, Japan, and Afghanistan as well as into the future. 

The diverse stories, such as The Night Belongs to Phoenix Jones skillfully highlights America’s deep-seated interest in comic books and superheroes. Prince of the Ascetics offers a story with a Buddhist sensibility, exploring an Indian guru’s attempt to adhere to his spiritual convictions. The disturbing story 4189 (co-written with Steven Barnes) has a utopian society where the only way people can die is by having sex. Johnson shows his range a short story writer, that was refreshing to read.

My favorite stories in the collection were the aforementioned, Occupying Arthur Whitfield, where a down-and-out cab driver learns how the wealthy lives and comes to a startling realization after an attempted robbery and Night Hawks, the title story, where Johnson puts himself in the story and reminisces about his friendship with the prominent playwright, August Wilson. It was the most emotional story in the entire collection and made me think about my responsibility as a fiction writer.

Night Hawks provided a solid set of short stories that allowed a writer to expand his narrative abilities, and it achieved that goal. If you have become a short story fan like me, then I would recommend you add Johnson’s latest short story collection to your TBR list.