Spring is here, and so are the promises of the season: the famous flowers are in bloom, the strawberries are ripe for picking, the earth's axis has started to tilt toward the sun, and—with its lackadaisical charm and balmy swagger—spring fever has set its sight on all of us. Oh, did we mention the kittens? But perhaps the best thing about the season is the arrival of May—Short Story Month—which is, as you might expect, American Short Fiction's favorite month of all. To celebrate we invited … [Read more...] about 14 Writers You Love & Their Favorite Short Stories
Amber Sparks
The 2018 American Short(er) Fiction Prize Winners
We are thrilled to announce the winners for this year's American Short(er) Fiction Prize, judged by Amber Sparks. Thank you to everyone who submitted. The winning stories will be published in the magazine’s fall issue. _____ First-Place Prize: "The Old Woman at the Edge of the Cliff" by Ariel Berry. Judge Amber Sparks writes, "This incredible, careful story read like an excavated fairy tale—brand new to us, but also somehow old as humans, and strange and sad as the wilder parts of the … [Read more...] about The 2018 American Short(er) Fiction Prize Winners
That’s When Things Got Weird: A Conversation with Amber Sparks & Lincoln Michel
We've have had the pleasure of reading the work of Amber Sparks and Lincoln Michel for a number of years, and we've published work by each of them as web exclusives in the not-so-distant past. This fall, Michel published his debut collection of short fiction, Upright Beasts, and Sparks's next book, The Unfinished World, will be published in January. We recently emailed both authors to ask about their new books, their writerly obsessions, the year in publishing, and the best things they've read … [Read more...] about That’s When Things Got Weird: A Conversation with Amber Sparks & Lincoln Michel
Online Fiction Interview: Amber Sparks
There are at least as many ways to title a story as there are to write one. An author might conjure up a title that points to a story's symbolic weight ("A Perfect Day for Bananafish," say) while another might employ a seemingly benign phrase ("Family Furnishings") only to have it churn and reverberate in the mind of a reader throughout the reading experience. And then there are the deceptively simple titles like Cheever's "The Swimmer," which, yes, is literally about a swimmer, but that doesn't … [Read more...] about Online Fiction Interview: Amber Sparks
The Janitor in Space
The janitor makes her way through the hallway with purpose, suctioning space dust and human debris from crevices of the space station. She is good at her job. She can push off from the walls in a steady trajectory without even looking; her eyes are always on the windows and the impossibly bright stars beyond. The astronauts are good but unclean, thinks the space janitor. Like the astronaut who left liquid salt floating in little globs all over the kitchen today. Like the lady astronauts who … [Read more...] about The Janitor in Space