Fractured Lit is dedicated to finding flash fiction that lingers long past the first reading: stories that stay with the reader for days, months, or even years. We want to find flash with emotional resonance, characters we care about, who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. We’re searching for Flash that investigates the mysteries of being human, the sorrow and the joy of connecting to the diverse population around us. All stories read horizontally, but we want those that explode vertically, which leaves the conventional and the cliched far behind. Fractured Lit is a flash fiction centered place for all writers of any background and experience. Let us help you tell your stories, the stories we knew we’ve needed all along.
She wakes to a white-bellied blur, a frantic smudge of a bird looping the motel room. It jerks sideways like something hunting or hunted, bounces off the window and scrabbles at the mirror. Its wings pop so loudly, the sound ricocheting off the pressboard walls, that at first she thinks there are dozens of them.…
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The guide led the small group of tourists through the grand foyer of the Powell Hall plantation house. Madison shambled far behind the others, eight months pregnant and exhausted by the Georgia heat. As she and Justin stood in the parlor listening to the docent yammer about the Powell family fortunes, the floodwaters of…
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Do not let your children stand in the shopping cart. Do not let them ride in the bottom of the cart, where pigtails or small hands could get trapped in the filthy wheels. And never — never — leave them unattended in the store. You will linger while looking for the price of party-size packs…
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