We are thrilled to announce the winners for this year's American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Susan Steinberg. Thank you to everyone who submitted—it is always uplifting to read your work. Congratulations to the winners! _____ First-Place Prize: "My Beautiful Bearded Wife" by Eric Schlich Judge Susan Steinberg writes, “‘My Beautiful Bearded Wife’ is a wonderfully written piece on the often-gendered competitions, roles, and power dynamics in a marriage; the narrator’s fragilities and
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My Constellation of 8: Elizabeth McCracken
Join American Short Fiction for the latest installment of My Constellation of 8 on June 8th at 6:30 p.m., featuring award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken in conversation about eight of her literary influences with ASF's Coeditor Adeena Reitberger. All book sales will benefit BookWoman in Austin, celebrating 45 years as the only feminist bookstore in Texas. Live closed captions are available for all Google Chrome users. Register now to save your spot. About Elizabeth
The 2020 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize Winners
We are delighted to announce that our brilliant judge, Manuel Gonzales, has selected the winners of this year's The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize. We consider it our privilege to have spent time with so many terrific submissions—thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work! Winner: Cassandra Garbus for “Hillside Homes” Of Garbus' story, Gonzales writes, "It's difficult to articulate what I find so striking and compelling about 'Hillside Homes,' but I have read it more than a
The Constellation Challenge
This November, American Short Fiction invites you on a journey to reach out to your chosen family and grow your constellation of influences. As part of a month-long postcard-writing challenge, we’ll share daily prompts from our honorees Jamaica Kincaid, C Pam Zhang, Selena Anderson, and Charlotte Gullick and invite you to send notes out into your universe and strengthen the invisible threads that connect us. The Constellation Challenge package includes a set of 28 limited-edition printed
My Constellation of 8: A Conversation with Carmen Maria Machado
This fall, American Short Fiction will host three virtual events featuring some of today’s most exciting and celebrated writers as they share eight books that helped them grow as writers, thinkers, and humans. As with previous events in this series, there will be an ASL interpreter at this event. This event is free, though you'll need to register here. For each “My Constellation of 8” event, we’ve partnered with an independent bookstore of the author’s choice to sell the recommended texts as
Every Possible Landform, Weather Condition, and Natural Disaster: An Interview with Matthew Baker
Matthew Baker's second collection of short stories, Why Visit America (out now from Henry Holt), takes ambitious aim at this country's societal and political systems. Each story arrives through some manner of warped lens—a lens in which America, at first, appears very unfamiliar. New technologies, new borders, new pandemics. But the deeper into these stories you read, the more you recognize similar dangers at play in our own United States. The stories quickly cohere into a comprehensive map of