: What is trending in literary-fiction short stories? What are the current trends in literary short fiction? which literary school, movement rules the contemporary short story now? Symbolism, magical

I would say that there are two questions here pertaining to short term "current trends" which may or may not feed into a longer term "literary movement". A literary movement is generally greater than any short fiction fashions and could span decades if not centuries.

Trends

For year on year trends there are several statistical sources, my personal goto guide being:

The Writers and Artists Yearbook 2016

Tom Tivnan writes on "News, views and trends in book publishing" that 7/10 top sellers for 2014 were in the YA genre, helped by films. Examples given include The Maze Runner, The Fault in our Stars and Divergent. Examples not given but n previous top seller lists would be Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games.

Not specifically mentioned but implied are the themes of "urban fantasy", "post apocalyptic" and "revolutionary". Not forgetting of course the frequent, recent occurance of vampires, zombies and werewolves.

Literary movement

For an exact definition of the current literary movement, we may have to wait 50 years or so, since this is often defined after the event. The nearest movements that summarize the current short term trends would be:

Magical Realism (magic appearing in realistic circumstances)
Stridentism (social revolution)
Transrealism (mixture of fantasy and sci-fi)

I've also heard 'post postmodernism' applied to the literary movement of the last century.

Symbolism

Finally, is symbolism still relevant? Well yes of course it is, creative expression is still relevant and used and will continue to be so as long as there are writers and artists.

Symbolism may have caught fire in 1800s France but is still very much alive today. For example, the fact that Harry Potter had a lightening scar could be considered symbolism or Katniss's Mockingjay pin.

In decades to come, literary critics may combine the trends (should they continue) into a new literary movement called "Symbolic Magical Postapocalytic Trans Unrealism - with zombies".

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