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American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

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editing

Everything Old Is New Again: An Interview With Co-Web Editor Adam Soto

by Nate Brown | April 30, 2020

Everything Old Is New Again: An Interview With Co-Web Editor Adam Soto

Writer and editor Adam Soto has long been a part of American Short Fiction's editorial team. As one of our assistant editors, he regularly read submission to the journal, wrote copious feedback for authors, and helped determine which stories would ultimately appear in our print edition. So, when we made the decision to bring on another web editor this spring, Adam was a natural choice for the role. This month, he joins our longtime web editor Erin McReynolds as our website's co-editor, and … [Read more...] about Everything Old Is New Again: An Interview With Co-Web Editor Adam Soto

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK Tagged With: Adam Soto, Andrey Platonov, Anton Checkov, Brandon Taylor, Carmen Maria Machado, Danny Vazquez, editing, Interview, Isaac Babel, James Alan McPherson, Joy Williams, Leonard Michaels, Lydia Davis, marilynne robinson, Marya Spence, Mavis Gallant, Michelle Huneven, Peter Orner, Sara Majka, Thomas Bernhard, writing

Editorial Outtakes: The Floating World

by C. Morgan Babst | October 9, 2018

Editorial Outtakes: The Floating World

Editorial Outtakes is a series in which we publish excerpts from recent books that you won’t find anywhere else because, prior the publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene from novelist C. Morgan Babst's debut The Floating World. Published in 2017 and out this month in paperback, Babst's acclaimed story of life in New Orleans following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina has been hailed as a poetic and tragic family tale with the … [Read more...] about Editorial Outtakes: The Floating World

Filed Under: EDITORIAL OUTTAKES, NOTEBOOK Tagged With: C. Morgan Babst, cutting, editing, Editorial Outtakes, Fiction, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Novels, the Floating World

Dinosaurs, the Alphabet, and Ten Things to Consider Prior to Submitting a Story for Publication

by Nate Brown | August 1, 2018

Dinosaurs, the Alphabet, and Ten Things to Consider Prior to Submitting a Story for Publication

I. To Begin, a Note about Pleasure A few years ago, the late James Salter was honored at the annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Festival with a prize in Fitzgerald’s name. During his keynote address at the award ceremony, Salter said something that was stupefying in its simplicity: reading, he said, was among the very greatest pleasures in his life. Perhaps that’s not a surprising sentiment for a writer so notably interested in pleasure, especially the pleasures of food, drink, travel, language, and … [Read more...] about Dinosaurs, the Alphabet, and Ten Things to Consider Prior to Submitting a Story for Publication

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK Tagged With: acceptance, adjectives, ajectives, Alice Munro, Angela Flournoy, apes, Barracoon, Barrelhouse magazine, Boston, Conversations and Connections conference, Cormac McCarthy, cultural appropriation, Denis Johnson, dialect, dinosaurs, editing, ellipses, empathy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald Festival, Fuckhead, James Baldiwn, James Baldwin, James Salter, Jenny Zhang, John Gardner, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Kossola, Lionel Shriver, Mary Gaitskill, Muse and the Marketplace, Narcissus, Nate Brown, Paul Auster, pleasure, publishing, racism, reading, rejection, Rickey Laurentiis, semiotics, Sex, Short Stories, Solmaz Sharif, story submission, Sublevel magazine, Ted Thompson, Tim Barris, Toni Morrison, violence, writing, Zora Neale Hurston

Primary Sidebar

Issue 81

Guest-edited by Fernando A. Flores, featuring new stories by Yvette DeChavez, Julián Delgado Lopera, Carribean Fragoza, Alejandro Heredia, Carmen Maria Machado, Ruben Reyes Jr., and Gerardo Sámano Córdova.

You can preview the issue here.

NEWS

Read the winners of the 2024 Insider Prize

Read the winners of the 2024 Insider Prize

By ASF Editors

“Memories are a nuisance,” Peter wrote to one of our writers after reading his short story, “but nonetheless they seem to make us who we are, as this story confirms.” This year’s submissions told many stories burdened with memory, but just as many stared bravely into the face of hope, satirized the state of politics, speculated on the future of the world, or else built entirely new worlds to inhabit. In short, the stories written on the inside reflected the stories we wrote this year on the outside. Stories of human toil and dreams and everything in between.
 

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