No Music Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpl3nFL7-yQ "The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, written in the month of its first publication, in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. The story describes a fictional small town which observes—as do many other communities, both large and small, throughout contemporary America—an annual ritual known as "the lottery." It has been described as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature."