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American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

Back Issue

Issue 71

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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

ISSUE 61

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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

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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

ISSUE 65 – The Emerging Writers Issue

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Emma Copley Eisenberg, “Ray’s Birthday Bar” “At Ray’s Birthday Bar, we specialize in birthdays. A free shot if you can show me a driver’s license that proves it’s your day, two free ones if the address on said license is South Philadelphia, and if you’re a lifer with ten years of loyal patronage, the number’s three, and Ray will turn on the disco ball. I read somewhere that you have to get twenty-three people in the same room before there is a fifty percent chance that two of them will have … [Read more...] about ISSUE 65 – The Emerging Writers Issue

ISSUE 63 – Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue

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Bret Anthony Johnston, “Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses” “His daughter’s first horse came from a traveling carnival where children rode him in miserable clockwise circles. He was swaybacked with a patchy coat and split hooves, but Tammy fell for him on the spot, and Atlee made a cash deal with the carnie. A lifetime ago, just outside Robstown, Texas. Atlee managed the stables west of town; Laurel, his wife, taught lessons there. He hadn’t brought the trailer—buying a pony hadn’t … [Read more...] about ISSUE 63 – Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue

ISSUE 67

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Mark Mayer, “The Clown” “Cruelty and pain were easy quantities, but murder used to express something in him. Take the kings of Greece and Persia who entertained guests with hollow bronze bulls that seemed to bay when wheeled over a fire, when in fact it was condemned queens screaming from inside. It was cruel, it was painful—but it was so kingly too. The court clapping and marveling, pretending they didn’t know, while the king spat seeds from his grapes. The Aztecs murdered like Aztecs, the … [Read more...] about ISSUE 67