• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • rss

American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

  • SUBSCRIBE
  • ISSUES
    • CURRENT ISSUE
    • BACK ISSUES
  • FICTION
  • MFA for All
  • EVENTS
    • THE STARS AT NIGHT
    • STORY SESSIONS
    • MORE EVENTS
  • STORE
  • SUBMIT
    • REGULAR SUBMISSIONS
    • THE HALIFAX RANCH PRIZE
    • AMERICAN SHORT(ER) FICTION PRIZE
    • THE INSIDER PRIZE
  • DONATE
  • ABOUT
  • NEWS

short story

The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize: Deadline Extended

by ASF Editors | April 15, 2025

The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize: Deadline Extended

We’re so pleased to announce that our judge for this year’s Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize will be Eric Puchner, author of the 2025 New York Times bestselling novel Dream State as well as the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and two story collections. Puchner lives in Baltimore, where he is the director of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. The deadline to submit has been extended to June 15, 2025. In addition to publication and a $2,500 prize, we are … [Read more...] about The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize: Deadline Extended

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK Tagged With: American Short Fiction, burdine johnson foundation, dream state, Eric Puchner, Fiction, fiction contest, halifax ranch fiction prize, short story, short story contest, writing contest

The Letters

by Andrew Porter | January 21, 2024

The Letters

My mother has been sending me letters lately. Not letters intended for me but rather letters she has been writing to various people in her life—important influences, she calls them. Relatives, friends, former classmates, coworkers. She has been writing two or three letters a week and sending them to me via email to look over and send back to her with comments. You’re a professor, she tells me, you know the right way to put these things.  She says she wants me to be brutally honest with her, … [Read more...] about The Letters

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: andrew porter, Fiction, san antonio, short story, the letters

EOD

by Serena Lin | February 8, 2024

EOD

Sam feared old people. She feared their drooping folds, their soft edges, like a block of butter left out for too long. They haunted the office in their squelching orthopedic sneakers, moving so slowly that Sam sometimes expected them to leave behind snail trails of mucus. She drifted behind them in the hallways, keeping at least ten paces of distance. She didn’t like to get too close to their odor of mothballs and lye soap; she didn’t want to see where their hair had thinned to reveal the … [Read more...] about EOD

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, Uncategorized, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: Fiction, office humor, publishing industry, short story, termination, Web Exclusive

Shouting Is at Least Talking

by Sumil Thakrar | December 29, 2023

Shouting Is at Least Talking

For six years I dated Ian, but only once we broke up did everyone close to me reveal they never liked him anyway. “We didn’t want to tell you,” my mother said. “We?” “Your father never liked him either.” She went quiet. “Ian’s tone was a little off. Do you know what I mean?” “He was good at communicating his needs,” I said. I found myself defending Ian, or at least defending my choice to spend six years with him, after a week of convincing myself I wasn’t right for him. “If you didn’t like … [Read more...] about Shouting Is at Least Talking

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: breakups, dating, Fiction, lifestyle, pyramid scheme, short story, skin, spa, Web Exclusive

Bleed and Bleed

by Hedgie Choi | December 26, 2023

Bleed and Bleed

Christopher was the nicest man I had ever met and so I was engaged to him. We got engaged during his residency and I told people we would get married when he became a doctor, but he never became a doctor he became a physician-scientist at the university researching von Willebrand disease because he thought this way he could help many people at once instead of one at a time. He often told me just how many people in the US alone suffered from von Willebrand disease, but I forgot immediately … [Read more...] about Bleed and Bleed

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, NOTEBOOK FEATURE, Uncategorized, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: Fiction, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Lowes, medical research, Relationships, short fiction, short story, theft, von Willebrand disease, Web Exclusive

Dievas X

by DS Sulaitis | July 19, 2023

Dievas X

There’s no escaping the bath ladies. They come out at night in our small village and limp to my tiny house on Naujoji Street. They knock and I go to open the door. It’s the custom to let everyone in. I’m in northern Lithuania, near the edge of a pine forest with roaming stallions that bite. I left New Jersey to live here. I am polite. The ladies are one hundred years old. I offer them coffee, not tea. They bring a paper bag. I recognize the bag. I’d thrown it out. At midnight the two search … [Read more...] about Dievas X

Filed Under: NOTEBOOK, Uncategorized, WEB EXCLUSIVES Tagged With: bathtub, dievas, Fiction, Lithuania, magic, short story, witchcraft

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Issue 82

Featuring new stories by Lydi Conklin, Annie Liontas, Kyle McCarthy, Carrie R. Moore, KJ Nakazawa-Kern, and Colleen Rosenfeld.

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!

×

Submit now to the Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize, judged by Eric Puchner. Win $2500, publication, and an-expenses-paid writing retreat at the Tasajillo Residency in Texas. Deadline is June 15, 2025.

×