A few weeks ago, we typed the name “Eva Shelton” into the website of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, looking for an address so that we could send her some exciting news: she’d won The Insider Prize for fiction. Sponsored by American Short Fiction and now in its fourth year, the prize highlights work by incarcerated writers in Texas, whether they live in state or federal prisons, local jails, or immigration detention centers. This time around the guest judge was Mitchell S. Jackson—who ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Cazones, 2016
My dying father and his friend, the former mayor, told me that if it was stories of the massacre I wanted, then there was this farmer living in a seaside village we should track down. So, we lowered ourselves into the mayor’s old green Volkswagen Beetle—my wheezing father in the passenger’s seat and myself in back—and made for La Costa Esmeralda. From what I gathered on the road, this farmer we were after, he’d been a riot policeman at La Noche de Tlatelolco, the massacre during the 1968 ... [READ MORE]
To Deaden the Nerve
https://soundcloud.com/americanshortfiction/to-deaden-the-nerve-by-christopher-notarnicola Marines sit on the ground with their feet in their hands, their bare knees against the wet morning grass to stretch their groins, to loosen their limbs, to gather themselves near the flight line behind company headquarters. They await the arrival of their instructor, the start of their next round of martial arts training. They wait to advance, to add to their takedowns and submissions, to harden their ... [READ MORE]
Even on Good Nights
1. On my morning walk along the service road, I see through the chain-linked fence a man on his knees. He’s smashing his fist, the flesh of which is a bloody mush, into the pebbly shoulder of the highway. The sound of it is like the slapping of a paper bag full of wet sticks into concrete. He’s not an old man, but not young either. There’s a bouquet of flowers on the ground beside him. He’s weeping and cursing. I call through the fence, “Hey man, please don’t do that. Please . . .” He stops, ... [READ MORE]
Register Now: 2021 Short Story Summer Camp
Join us this summer for a first-ever, limited-entry manuscript consultation and virtual craft series from the editors of American Short Fiction. Each registrant will receive detailed feedback on their submitted story and attend a series of three live virtual seminars focused on honing and refining their work with an editor's eye. Regular registration ($425) will close on June 15th. Note: Applications will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. This is not a juried application ... [READ MORE]
The Get-Go
Sadie’s mother was tall and narrow, with a long braid down her back, black when Sadie was very little, then silvery, then silver, an instrument to measure time, an atomic clock. Her father had been tall, too, both he and the mother the tallest members of short families. In photographs and at reunions, they loomed. Everyone was happy when they had a short child: they’d decided to fit in after all. Sadie was small and plump and blonde, and when she was nine, her father died, and it was just the ... [READ MORE]