Multilingual We’re in the garden. There are fragrances there, fluent in many languages. Cassie digs, plants, pats the earth. We’ll soon be wedding cake toppers—her lacy gown/my penguin-wear. There are wind chimes, tinkling. They were once...
We’re so excited to announce the 25 titles on our shortlist! We'll announce the winners' titles in the next few days! Thank you for your patience! From this list, K-Ming Chang has chosen 3 winners! "I got so excited about these amazing stories that I spent all of...
We’re so excited to announce the 52 titles of our longlist! The submissions we received were so original, exciting, 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!...
My five-year-old walks the sidewalks with me into town. There is no other place for him. He holds my finger with one hand. His other hand clutches a headless black bird. He nibbles on it from time to time. I cannot wrench it away from him. It wouldn’t matter. There...
1. Tangerines Rodney and Chelsea have decided this is the day. They are sixteen years old and they are in love. Neither of them has ever done it, though Rodney has come close, with a girl he worked with at Dairy Queen who smelled like French fries and who had perfect,...
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...
“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...
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...
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” 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,...
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...
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...