Judge Gwen Kirby has chosen her grand-prize winner and the 15 finalists, who we will publish in 2026! Please congratulate these writers and get excited about reading their stories soon! We think these are some of our best from 2025! Grand Prize Winner: Blackboxing by...
Oasis Motel 3:06 a.m. Mandy picks shattered bits of windshield out of her arm. Glass fragments glisten red, stark pinpricks against the yellowed porcelain sink. She looks away from the marred counter. Plinks another shard into the basin. The motel room is dark....
We love how writers interpret and are inspired by this theme and prompt each year! It helps us see our own world through a new lens, and these stories always resonate! Here are the 40 longlisted titles for your review! We'll be back next week with our shortlist, which...
He built a house out of wood in which to lose his grief. To fill the house, he stole crumbs from the lips of strangers as their tongues searched their mouths. He stole the sadness floating in the eyes of the bereaved. He stole the darkness inside their clasped hands....
Ma keeps Nabh home again because he’s still fatigued, and she says he has such heavy bags under his eyes he could go for a month-long trip to India. No fever, though. He’s well enough to be bored. And … he’s going to miss the fire drill today. No big...
Albert Abdul-Barr Wang conducted this conversational interview via email during June and July of 2025. Allison Field Bell was kind enough to discuss her multiple practices in writing and photography, just as Finishing Line Press released her latest chapbook, Without...
True story (1) In the midst of war, she thinks about her plants. True story (2) Her friend phones to say she’s arrived safely at her elder sister’s apartment, which, unlike her younger sister’s, is far enough from Tehran. The bombs drop somewhere between “safely” and...
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it was ice and fire, and we felt like both. It was cheap and closer than anyone...
The word victim is designed to slide right between your ribs. It’s a slender blade of a word, and it excels at gutting you, at hollowing you out. What it’s not designed to do is break you. It assumes you’re already broken. The morning of the verdict, we stand across...
Let’s say dad didn’t beat you because you back-chatted and wore your skirt too short, and you didn’t sneak out to meet Peter, then peck like a bird at our bedroom window at midnight smelling of cask wine and boy. Imagine — you hadn’t woken up lamenting you’d ever been...
She wore her bones like silk. Not with shame, but with memory. Each rib a prayer. Each vertebra a vow. They had once dressed her in red silk and called her divine. They used to carve her name into temple stone. Midwives and mourners and those who bled for too long...
God lived in the cheek-pink etching of a china plate, and He was shaped like fire. He roosted in the glass cabinet year-round, but on special occasions like this, Jenna got to bury Him in mashed potatoes and scrape her fork over the bush. Today was Easter Sunday. She...