For any who haven't ever sampled Ellison's short stories, I recommend starting with his ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW collection (1971), that collects some of his best and most acclaimed stories from the first 15 years of his writing career, including:

"I Have No Mouth,. I Must Scream"
"The Discarded"
"Blind Lightning"
"'Repent Harlequin' said the Ticktockman"
"Bright Eyes"
"Eyes of Dust"
"The Very Last Day of A Good Woman".

I like most of his short story collections through the 1970's and early 1980's, that for me have a high ratio of good stories. The downside of his 1960's collections, while also good, is that many of them repeatedly reprint a number of the same stories. A practice Ellison stopped after 1971 in his books. But in the first 15 years, his books were much harder to find.

For me, Ellison's most compelling nonfiction collection was MEMOS FROM PURGATORY, where he describes a number of things he observed living in New York, both socially among his peers, being arrested at political protests and spending time in "the tombs" (jail) overnight with a segment of society most of us rarely if ever see, and the hopelessness of them numbly rolling along on that track. And when he briefly ran with a gang in the late 1950's to understand the gang problem, a subject he initially knew nothing about, and so basically researched it undercover, running with a gang in Brooklyn for 4 months. It's an eloquent snapshot of American society as Ellison saw it in the early/mid 1960's.

Of the stories that best capture Ellison's personal life where he presents his true life and personality as a barely veiled character in his stories, I recommend:
"One Life Furnished in Early Poverty" (in APPROACHING OBLIVION, 1974)
"The New York Review of Bird" (in STRANGE WINE, 1977)
"All the Birds Come Home to Roost"(where he nightmarishly relives all his past sexual relationships with women, in SHATTERDAY, 1980)
"Jeffty is Five" (in SHATTERDAY, 1980)
"The 3 Most Important Things In Life" (in STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, 1982)
"The Hour That Stretches" (also in STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, 1982)

For those who haven't already read them, I hope I turned you onto some cool stuff. I think it virtually impossible for you to be disappointed with these stories. This is some passionate, brilliant, and often very funny writing.