It started out small—a red speck hardly noticed on the Harlem sidewalk. Maybe it drifted down from the heavens. Maybe a bird scavenged it from Central Park. Maybe it grew from a crack in the concrete. However it came to be, passers-by stepped over it without a glance,...
There was a man—there is always a man. There was the crush of gray wave. The cold bite of late fall. She’s been down here for so long, she can’t remember things she once would never have thought important enough to forget. What the ground feels like. What smoke...
We're proud to announce the 23 titles of our shortlist! The submissions we received were so thrilling, inventive, and affecting that we've had a hard time narrowing down the list! From this list, judge Kevin Brockmeier has chosen his final 3 winners and 2 honorable...
Years ago, his mother brought home a rabbit. “Make it fat, will you?” she asked him. The boy held the shivering rabbit in his arms, wrapped it in his coat, folded its body into his, feeling the weak tremble next to his heart. It was spotlessly white like fresh snow....
We're proud to announce the 57 titles of our longlist! The submissions we received were so thrilling, inventive, and affecting that we've had a hard time narrowing down the list! From this list, 20-25 stories will make it to the shortlist for judge Kevin Brockmeier to...
I wear my dead sister’s lipstick around the house like Grandma told me to. It leaves my lips dry and the shade doesn’t suit me, it’s purple and dark and velvety, against her golden-brown skin luminous and edgy. On me it looks tired. Most things do. But I wear it...
Our father knows all about fishing, but he doesn’t do it anymore. He doesn’t do a lot of things anymore. He used to be real good. About once a year when we were young, he used to drive his old red station wagon all the way down to Kentucky to fish in a competition....
1 She is cold, but they are frost and shiver. She digs them holes in the snow, sweeping ice crystals away. They burrow like wolf pups, snuggle inside enclosed walls. They think they are safe. Once she is sure they are sound asleep, she tiptoes away. They will survive...
The truth is I got hired for my looks and promoted for my flexible standards of truth and that is really all there is to say about it. Except the job was easy enough at first, standing by the door and chiming Irasshaimase! whenever anyone entered, even though it was...
Plan to Free The dog ate the turkey. Then killed all the village swans, piled the white corpses at the front door, impossible to hide, a pyre to be paid for with exile. In the orange school bus, every morning and afternoon, no matter the snow or dust, we’d lower the...
From the time I learn how to bleed I keep a scab in the fleshy inner curve of my ear. Small, coarse, red-brown. I tend to it like I should tend to myself. When I am lonely, or need something to ruin, I dig a fingernail into the cartilage, tear the scab. Little blood,...
I don’t know where Mom learned to drive. I don’t know where she learned to hold the wheel firm or belt my chest with her right arm whenever we stopped suddenly for the stray deer lying in the road, still half-breathing, or the broken homes that spilled their bricks...