Microfictions often set-up and exhibit their own kind of narrative rules, and we're excited to honor these 47 rule-breaking stories. We will announce our shortlist very soon. We're excited to get those stories to judge Deb Olin Unferth as soon as...
They spoke with such thick accents that she sometimes couldn’t understand them, her father’s distant parents, but she clearly heard the woman say, “It can’t be yours, not blood-related, not this loud little silly girl,” and so she tried her hardest...
My uncle showed me a casting from one of his hawks. I asked if it was the same as a pellet, and he said it was, but with hawks you call it a casting. I knew what a pellet was because earlier that year a lady in khakis had come to my classroom and...
We walk cautiously along the trail in leaden morning light, here for the spawning salmon and for a change. That’s how she said it on the phone last week, my daughter: I need a big fucking change of scenery. The forest is dank, decayed, ripe with...
On our first date, our only date, I lied to you when you asked me about my biggest fear. Sinkholes, I said. My therapist had suggested I cultivate a tangible one, something I could see and avoid rather than my fear of time, which was abstract and...
The teenagers on the subway were giddy as they downed their Starbursts, shrieking and giggling, trading yellows, reds, and oranges. Reeya remembered those days of sugar highs and how they had whispered about who did what or did not do what. And how...
I trace a line from the top of her forehead to the tip of her nose, a peachy pink so delicate it has the silken texture of a rose petal at the peak of its bloom. Her tiny lips pucker, and her fingers flex open, revealing a hand in its most...
Your best friend, Meg, is scared for you. She wants to accompany you to the lake, but you need to be alone, so you drive there and wander the aspen grove, leaves trembling in the light wind. You touch the smooth, greenish-white bark, the rough,...
The uranium bird has been picking seeds from my lawn. It’s easy to tell where it’s been; it leaves behind a trail of brown, wilted grass or shriveled tree leaves. It lives somewhere near the end of the road near the brook, I think. I’ve seen it...
Robert Shapard’s collection, Bare Ana and Other Stories, will be released by Regal House Publishing in February. Winner of the 2022 W.S. Porter Prize, this full-length collection brings to life an array of flash and short-short stories that are by...
We were in search of eggs. White ones like the moon, and some as big as newborn puppies in the palm. Biking wasn’t smart because you’d miss the little things hiding in the weeds and bushes, placed out there for us wives to find. It was the daddies...
Your perfume suffuses the hall, assaulting me before you do. Jo Malone Waterlily. You only wear it at night, a panther seducing a mate. Three days ago, I’d clocked the bottle on your vanity, drawn to its pale blue orb. Pressing my nose to the...