There’s a cemetery on a mountainside in Kabul that’s running out of space. I read a New York Times piece about it years ago. A group of boys run grave maintenance, for a price, and one girl, six years old, works the mountainside with them. She brags like the boys about taking in mourners—too young to appreciate how much we mourners want to be taken in. She brags about what her father in Iran will bring her when he returns home. She prays for a Galaxy phone. I still think about her prayers and … [Read more...] about She Said It Like She Meant It
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Issue 72 Editor’s Note
I am thrilled to be putting this issue in your hands. It is, as ever, a collection of singular short stories that celebrate the form and highlight its range, but it is also a gift at the end of a turbulent year—work to get lost in, work to be found in, work that in its celebration of emerging writers, and Black emerging writers in particular, encourages us to imagine everything that is yet to come: all of the chances we’ll have to see more brilliant work by the writers included here, none of … [Read more...] about Issue 72 Editor’s Note
Issue 71
ISSUE 71 Featuring new stories by Brandon Hobson, Melinda Moustakis, Patrick Nathan, Tracey Rose Peyton, Anne Valente, and Rachel Vogel. Subscribe now to receive the Summer issue. Tracey Rose Peyton, “The Last Days of Rodney” He was known most everywhere—a face, a caption, a grainy video clip—but it had been over twenty years now, and he was still trying to forge a new chapter unconnected to the first. Wishful thinking, he knew. It would always be connected. No one would ever bring up his … [Read more...] about Issue 71
The Stars at Night: Constellations
Please note that this event has passed. Please visit our Stars at Night page for information about this year's event. Each fall, the editors and staff of American Short Fiction host a grand celebration that recognizes literary excellence, extraordinary literary service, great teaching and mentorship, and a debut writer from Texas. The Stars at Night is our favorite event of the year because it's intimate, celebratory, community-fueled, and inspiring. It's the most down-home, sophisticated … [Read more...] about The Stars at Night: Constellations
ISSUE 61
Caitlin Horrocks, “Paradise Lodge” “The plane from Cuzco arrives only a little late, the minibus gets only a little stuck on the muddy road, the long motorized canoe scrapes threateningly at the river bottom but does not run aground. This group of tourists is not as fat as the last one, Victor notices cheerily. They are easily charmed, too—by the sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves that Victor serves from a cooler for lunch; by the cartoon jaguar that the park security checkpoint stamps in … [Read more...] about ISSUE 61
ISSUE 60
Chris Leslie-Hynan, “Black Sugar” “It wasn’t until almost the end that she knew she would be a song. All through the summer she was nearly certain their life together would prove too dull to write about. His music was such a constant procession of ménages à trois in club bathrooms, of course he would turn out to be a homebody. And yet it could have really been like that, hour after hour of fashion wear and fellatio—she thought him the only man in America about whom the revelation of a … [Read more...] about ISSUE 60