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Shouting Distance is a collection of ten short stories written by Gary Thomas Smith. Most of the stories take place in Appalachia and rural Kentucky, and the stories set outside of the region still feature characters whose identities are intricately bound to it. The characters' relationships to Appalachia are complex as some embrace the mountains and their culture, while others feel oppressed by that environment. The stories are driven by characters' relationships with family and friends, with their futures and their pasts, or with cultural expectations. The collection explores themes such as poverty, violence, substance abuse, and loss. The natural world is pervasive throughout these stories, and many of them illustrate the effects of human interaction with the environment. While the seeming decline of rural life is at the foreground of this collection, it does not dismiss the beauty of this life. Rather, it suggests that there is promise for the future in spite of loss, hate, and fear.

Sunset View is a linked collection of short fiction that explores the dynamics of dysfunctional families. Characters in this collection have been affected by the neglect, absence, or death of their family members and friends. They search for recognition and love as they try to find their place in life. Some turn to animals or fleeting relationships to fill this void. Others attempt suicide or simply disappear. The characters are in denial, unsure how to deal with grief, and often make decisions that alienate them from the friends and family they do have. Set in northeast Tennessee and named after a local trailer park, the collection creates a portrait of Candace Annette, a young woman who struggles to come of age and distance herself from the only life she's ever known.

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A House with People in It is a collection of stories working through concepts of identity, family, relationships, and how those things renew and replace themselves in perpetuity. I think of identity less of a rigid, singular thing and more of a swirling, fluid multitude. If the body is a house, then identity is the people who live inside it. How they live next to each other—who butts up against who, who sleeps in what bed—is what’s interesting to me. These works collected in this thesis are largely the stories that I think hew closest to the things that I am concerned with, in the identities that I occupy.

The six short stories in this collection explore the lives and desires of disparate women. In "Sentinel," a woman visits an ex-boyfriend, injured in the army, and his family, with whom she has a fraught relationship, in their vacation home. A diagnosis of cancer spurs a woman to change her life in "Cell Division"; when a new possibility for treatment arises, she reconsiders the choice she made to take her life apart. In the story, "A Wake," a funeral and an unexpected pregnancy set the stage for the breakdown of a couple's relationship. In "A Cyclic Process," a woman conflates her ambivalence toward the anti-depressants she takes with her feelings about her relationship; in the end, she cannot let go of either. A woman, traveling with a new acquaintance, takes a trip to Venice in "The Edge of the World," and falls into an unsettling relationship with a man she meets there. The process of protein denaturation serves as a metaphor in "Marina," for the unraveling of a friendship between two teenage girls.

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The Jubilant City Almanac is a collection of short stories set in the magical Jubilant City, a city founded by a group of Black women in 1736. These stories bridge the whimsical and magical with the realities of poverty, classicism, addiction, abuse and health disparities. “Got His Alligator” follows the journey of two codependent addicts as they try to get their fashion designs onto Jubilant City’s premiere drama, Girl, Please. The characters in “Carbon Copy” use a magical phone to bring Denzel Washington to the city. “Jeremiah the Conqueror” summons Black American folk legend, High John. THrough an exploration of magical realism and speculative fiction, The Jubilant City Almanac tells the stories of Black families and Black complexity.

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