N says we’re looking for that Leo and Kate love that crashes sudden, veins fire and ice, the kind where you go down with the ship. I tell N that Kate didn’t die, except inside, but N doesn’t mind because she’s lusting after Leo while I’m trying not to stare at Kate’s...
flash fiction
A Guide to Small Town Ghosts
“A Guide to Small Town Ghosts” is actually four linked micro-stories, each of which devises and fulfills its own narrative shape while overlapping with the others to create a macro-shape. Think of that carnival game that requires you to drop four metal disks so that...
The Changeling
Some works of fantasy make you feel that they are not ornamenting reality so much as unearthing one of its most elemental components. Such is the case with “The Changeling.” It was at the story’s halfway point, with the appearance of the thread-people, that I found...
A Too Small Room
Like a Grimms’ fairy tale transported to Japan, “A Too Small Room” proceeds through a world whose houses, forests, and marketplaces are elementary, even quintessential, but make up only half its substance, since the space in which it exists is built every bit as much...
god at the side of the road
“god at the side of the road” has the quality of folklore from centuries ago and worlds away that’s somehow been transplanted to contemporary middle America, a place that’s too new and too hopeful to understand the forces it’s confronting. It’s the narrative voice,...
The Bone Child
I found the development in the final section of this story genuinely frightening—a dark fantasy in which the element of fantasy is so mysterious that you barely perceive the darkness until, in a glimpse of blood and teeth, it overpowers the page. Judge Kevin...
the 2021 fractured lit Anthology prize shortlist
We’re so excited to announce the 34 titles of our shortlist! These stories are so good we've decided to publish them on the website this year prior to their publication in the print anthology! Thank you for your patience! From this list, Kathy Fish will select 20...
Blue Mama
Without thinking too deeply about it we presume ourselves to be adequate parents. The baseline assumption is that we would do anything for the babies; we would fight, we would kill. Tonight somehow they outnumber us, although there are still two of them. The one who...
the 2021 fractured lit Anthology prize longlist
We’re so excited to announce the 62 titles of our longlist! The submissions we received were so resonant, engaging, and creative that we’ve had a hard time narrowing down the list! We'll announce the shortlist titles in the next few days! Thank you for your patience!...
By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her
After dinner, Father folds a swan out of his paper napkin. Mother says, “My, how early it grows dark.” First Daughter laughs at a flickering outside the window. She thinks it is an out-of-season firefly or a spark from the chimney, but really it is someone creeping...
Calculus of Devotion
—after Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express Clare dresses like an ice cream cone. Chocolate lace, vanilla skirts. All of it melting down her limbs, rain or slush. Faye is glad that Clare doesn’t give her an ounce of recognition—not when they sit next to each other in...
Nothing the Wind Might Sting
1. The bird flies in through an open window on the first story of the hotel. The bird flies through a patch of dead zinnia stems in a splintery wooden window box where the cat sits sometimes in the nice weather, his shiny fur full of the dust that is...