Whose voices are these, I wonder each fall as submissions for the Insider Prize begin accumulating in my office. Four years on as director of Texas’s annual literary award for incarcerated writers, some of the names written across the bloated white and manila envelopes have grown familiar—essayists, short story writers, and the places they are relegated to calling “home”. The farm-to-market roads leading in and out of the towns of Rosharon, Kenedy, and Hondo, the units and prisons named after … [Read more...] about The Insider Prize Winners 2025
So Long
I had not been inside since they added automatic doors and turned the Town Food into a Food Town, preferring to drive fifteen minutes to the Shop Best where I was guaranteed to run into no one and where every aisle smelled like the meat counter. For whatever reason, the parking lot of Shop Best was strewn with straw—people tracked it onto the linoleum, strands pasting around the wheels of the shopping carts—and I’d often find it in bed when I woke up in the mornings, flattened between the … [Read more...] about So Long
ISSUE 81 Guest-edited by Fernando A. Flores, featuring new stories by Yvette DeChavez, Julián Delgado Lopera, Carribean Fragoza, Alejandro Heredia, Carmen Maria Machado, Ruben Reyes Jr., and Gerardo Sámano Córdova. Yvette DeChavez, "Saint Gloria" I’d only hung out with Ana and Margarita a few times, and always with Rogelio, but I hated the way they talked, their eyes flitting back and forth between them like the mud-colored lizards hunting for flies in our yard. The two of them seemed to … [Read more...] about
ISSUE 80
Featuring new stories by Matthew Lawrence Garcia, Laura Grothaus, Joshua Henkin, John McManus, JoAnna Novak, Peter Orner, Lucy Tan, and Zahid Rafiq. Matthew Lawrence Garcia, "Harmony" The day Tupac died I was with a few boys and this girl Elena I was into. Not that she’d been reciprocating. We were at the New Mexico State Fair, fooling around with the few bucks we had, trying to win goldfish at the ring-toss game. Thing was, if you got one, you could point to another person and they had … [Read more...] about ISSUE 80
The Stars at Night 2024
Please note that this event has passed. Please visit our Stars at Night page for information about this year’s event. Each year, the editors and staff of American Short Fiction host a grand party that recognizes literary excellence, extraordinary literary service, a brilliant new story collection, and a debut writer from Texas. We’re so excited to celebrate with everyone on March 23, 2024, at the Tudor Cottage in Austin’s Pease Park. The Stars at Night is our favorite event of the year … [Read more...] about The Stars at Night 2024
MFA for All Spring 2025
MFA for ALL Registration is open for individual classes of MFA for All Spring 2025, with new faculty Matt Bell, Kristen Arnett, and ZZ Packer. Full-semester registration is closed. MFA for All was born from our desire to create a space where MFA-quality instruction is widely accessible to writers no matter their age, background, location, or financial situation. MFA for All is not a degree-granting program—it is a community-rich online educational experience led by top-notch faculty, free of … [Read more...] about MFA for All Spring 2025