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 ... [READ MORE]
NEWS
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 ... [READ MORE]
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 ... [READ MORE]
Announcing the 2020 Winners of the Insider Prize
For the last three years, American Short Fiction has sponsored a contest for incarcerated writers in Texas. A group of writers at the Connally Unit, in Kenedy, Texas, came up with the name: The Insider Prize. Each year we get dozens of essays and short stories from men and women in prisons and jails across the state, some handwritten and others produced on typewriters. They tell stories about their lives before prison, about the conditions inside, and about the many places their imaginations ... [READ MORE]
Say Hello to Amanda Faraone, Our New Development & Communications Director
Our little team here at American Short Fiction has just grown by one: this month we're welcoming the wonderful Amanda Faraone on board as our new development and communications director. As a fiction writer, literary programmer, and seasoned communications and development professional, Faraone brings valuable experience to the table, and we're so grateful and excited to have her on our team. I recently emailed Faraone a few questions so that you, too, can get to know her. — Nate Brown: First, ... [READ MORE]
In 2020, Recommit to Reading Literary Magazines
With the new year comes our best-ever subscription bundle. From now until February 1st, you can get a one-year subscription to American Short Fiction, The Believer, and BOMB for only $80. That's a 27% discount off the regular price! This bundle makes a great gift as well, so if you've got a literature and art-loving friend or two, get this deal while the getting's good. Click here to Subscribe Today. Founded in 1991 and based in Austin, Texas, American Short Fiction is a two-time finalist for ... [READ MORE]