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American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

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Sex

Pioneers

by Maya Perez | February 23, 2022

Pioneers

ASF is recognizing Black History Month by sharing, for the first time online, four stories from our Winter 2020 issue, which showcased emerging Black writers selected by guest editor and PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize winner Danielle Evans. Here is author Maya Perez, reflecting on the experience of writing this story: My initial idea for the story was two people with a shared history having a reunion and realizing that while they don’t know each other at all, they share an overwhelming … [Read more...] about Pioneers

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, Uncategorized, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: adults, Emerging Black Writers, High School, Issue 72, Love, Mars, Maya Perez, Pioneers, racism, Sex, the past

Killers

by Susan Steinberg | July 31, 2019

Killers

the water is deeper than it looks; and we’re not the worst swimmers, but it’s dark; we tend not to swim at night; no, we tend not to swim at night with guys; we all knew of the girl who drowned; she sank like a stone, they said; she was showing off that night, they said; the guys all said; tonight, it’s guys we meet at the boathouse; they’re here for the end of summer; they’re beautiful in a polished way; but we’re beautiful in that polished way; we look out across the water; we whisper … [Read more...] about Killers

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: Boys, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Girls, Graywolf, Online Fiction, Sex, short fiction, Short Stories, Susan Steinberg, violence, Web Exclusive

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

Choose Your Own

by Jeanne Jones | October 3, 2016

Choose Your Own

  Section A You are sitting in the bedroom of a house that is inches away from the freeway. Cars whiz past at an alarming rate, and it seems to you that a minor slip of the steering wheel will send a car crashing into the bedroom, killing the occupants of the house. You are there on a date with the man who lives there, a man named Oswald. He complains that the highway was built too close to his house, taking away his front yard—you see the tiny blades of grass that are left of it, so few … [Read more...] about Choose Your Own

Filed Under: WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: choose your own, choose your own adventure, dating, death, fear, Love, Sex, Web exclusive fiction

The Tobacconist

by Anna Noyes | June 1, 2015

The Tobacconist

George searched his pockets for change, cluttering the counter with lint and pen caps, a crumpled tissue, pausing to clean his glasses while the tobacconist waited at the open register. It was the tobacconist he cared about, not the neatly lined cigars he had thumbed through moments earlier. George could see the smoke shop from his kitchen window, and last week had watched the tobacconist as he emerged and stood on the street corner in a pouring rain, until his coat was drenched through and rain … [Read more...] about The Tobacconist

Filed Under: WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: Anna Noyes, Family, Fantasies, Fatherhood, Love, Lust, Marriage, Sex, Sons, The Tobacconist, Web Exclusive

All the Girls We Knew in the Suburbs

by Ben Hoffman | December 1, 2014

All the Girls We Knew in the Suburbs

It was the night before Christmas, but all that meant to us was that no one else was out and the suburbs were our playgrounds more than ever. We were two Jewish kids from the city and it was not our holy night. No family unwrapping ceremonies awaited us in the morning. Our days of unwrapping, all eight of them, had ended a week earlier, though those days of miracle light were not our holiest. Everyone thought that because they fell so close to Christmas, even if no one ever knew exactly when; … [Read more...] about All the Girls We Knew in the Suburbs

Filed Under: WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: All the Girls We Knew in the Suburbs, Christmas, Fiction, Hanukkah, High School, Sex, short fiction, The Grinch, Web Exclusive

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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.
 

Issue 81 is out now: guest-edited by Fernando A. Flores, with stories by Julián Delgado Lopera, Carmen Maria Machado, Ruben Reyes Jr., and more. Order yours today!

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