Best Small Fictions
Masthead
Best Small Fictions Editors
& Advisory Board 2025
Guest Editor:
Robert Shapard
Series Editor:
Nathan Leslie
Managing Editor:
Michelle Elvy
Assistant Editors:
Barbara Byar
Damian Dressick
Kate Horsley
Lynn Mundell
Mandira Pattnaik
Charles Rammelkamp
Consulting Editor:
Richard Peabody
Senior General Advisory Board:
Michael Cocchiarale
Kathy Fish
X. J. Kennedy
Clare MacQueen
Pamela Painter
Robert Shapard
James Thomas
Interns:
Cindy Nguyen
Founding Editor:
Tara Lynn Masih
Former Series Editors:
Sherrie Flick
Tara Lynn Masih
Contact
For inquiries about the Best Small Fictions series, please email Series Editor Nathan Leslie at fictionsnlbestsmall2019 [at] gmail [dot] com.
For distribution and sales questions, please email Alternating Current Executive Editor Leah Angstman at altcurrentpress [at] gmail [dot] com.
About Best Small Fictions
Best Small Fictions is the first-ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. Now in its eleventh year of existence, Best Small Fictions features the best microfiction, flash fiction, haibun stories, and prose poetry from around the world.
Originally founded by Tara L. Masih, Best Small Fictions is currently steered by series editor Nathan Leslie, who has served in this role since 2019. Guest editors have included Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler (2015), PEN/Malamud Award-winner Stuart Dybek (2016), PEN/Malamud Award-winner Amy Hempel (2017), two-time Pushcart Prize-winner Aimee Bender (2018), PEN/Faulkner-nominee Rilla Askew (2019), Sonder Press operator Elena Stiehler (2020), PEN/Bingham Prize-winner Rion Amilcar Scott (2021), Bridport Prize-winner Elaine Chiew (2022), People’s Book Prize-winner Catherine McNamara (2023), Story Prize longlister Amber Sparks (2024), and award-winning cocreator and editor of the Norton Sudden and Flash Fiction anthologies Robert Shapard (2025).
Submission Guidelines
Editors are encouraged to send their five best works of flash and microfiction, haibun stories, and prose poems published in the previous year. Submissions for the 2026 edition are now open and will consider pieces published in the 2025 calendar year. Submit via the portal link below. Submissions will close on January 31, 2026.
We encourage an eclectic array of styles and approaches. We love work featuring memorable imagery, characterization, and language. Submissions should be within 1,000 words; this is an approximate guideline, however, and we ask editors to use their own discretion. Submissions may be submitted as word documents, PDFs, or links to the published work.
Selected pieces will appear in the 2026 edition, and honorable-mention pieces and features may additionally appear in the online literary journal The Coil. All selected contributors will receive a complimentary PDF and ePUB of the finished anthology, along with a 40% discount for optional print versions.
Distribution
The 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions are or will be available in paperback distributed through Ingram and Asterism Books, and in ebook distributed through Ingram and OverDrive. Ingram’s print bookseller terms are 55% with free returns accepted. The editions are available to the public anywhere that books are sold and at all major online retailers. Please email altcurrentpress [at] gmail [dot] com for more information.
Past Issues in the Series
The 2015 and 2016 editions were originally published by Queen’s Ferry Press and have been reissued by Braddock Avenue Books, who also published the 2017 and 2018 editions. Sonder Press then took over publication and published the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 editions. Alternating Current Press currently publishes the series and has published the 2023, 2024, and 2025 editions, and will publish the 2026 edition.
2025 Guest Editor
ROBERT SHAPARD co-created and edited with James Thomas many volumes of W. W. Norton’s flash and sudden fiction anthologies. His own stories have appeared in journals such as New World Writing Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Juked, 100-Word Story, New Flash Fiction Review, Necessary Fiction, Typishly, Bending Genres, Fractured Lit, and New England Review and are collected in a new book, Bare Ana and Other Stories. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he helped establish America’s first flash fiction archive at the Harry Ransom Center. Join him on Facebook or at robertshapard.com.
Series Editor
NATHAN LESLIE won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. Invisible Hand (2022) and A Fly in the Ointment (2023) are his latest books. Nathan’s previous works of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is currently the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of the online journal Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.
Managing Editor
MICHELLE ELVY is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, on the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021), and she has recently co-edited, among others, the anthologies A Kind of Shelter: Whakaruru-taha (2023), A Cluster of Lights: 52 Writers Then and Now (2023), Breach of All Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love, and Venice (2022), and Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand (2020). Founder of National Flash Fiction Day NZ and Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, Michelle also teaches online at 52|250 A Year of Writing. Find out more at michelleelvy.com.
2025 Best Small Fictions Selections
- “Whale Fall” by Shauna Friesen / Gone Lawn *
- “Swamp” by Catherine Niu / The Cincinnati Review *
- “Teddy Bear Pancake” by Chris Scott / Weird Lit Magazine *
- “This Thing in Our Chests” by Awo Twumwaah / Afreada *
- “Finding the Water to Cry” by Jacqueline Goyette / Stanchion *
- “Messiah” by Kate O’Grady / Fish Anthology 2024 *
- “No Ponyboy” by Faithna Geffrard / Susurrus *
- “Sundays Are for Yard Work” by Kate Brody / Electric Literature *
- “Pupurangi Shelley” by Robert Sullivan / Hopurangi — Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka *
- “Heads” by Tina S. Zhu / Cease, Cows *
- “This Little Catalog You’ve Been Assembling” by Rosa Alcalá / The Hopkins Review
- “Thread” by Mikki Aronoff / The Mackinaw
- “Tokyo Panorama Suite” by Cassandra Atherton / The Mackinaw
- “Record of Lumber Used in the Great Temple’s Main Hall” by Stewart C. Baker / Sans Press
- “And We Know” by Rebecca Ball / Flash Frontier
- “All Made-Up” by Megan Baxter / Diagram
- “Evacuated” by Aimee Bender / Vestal Review
- “Wool” by Carly Berwick / The Cincinnati Review
- “Something That I Learned from Someone Who Is Gone” by Darsie Bowden / The Prose Poem
- “Doubting the Enterprise” by Brady Brickner-Wood / Sonora Review
- “Tell Me I’d Look Pretty on Your Wall” by Sébastien Luc Butler / Hayden’s Ferry Review
- “Things I Did to Live” by Joseph Byrd / Exposition Review
- “You Work in the Worst Diner in Existence That’s Always Open for Business” by Avitus B. Carle / X-Ray Literary Magazine
- “Razia, Razia” by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar / The Good Life Review
- “Cumulonimbi” by Christine H. Chen / Flash Flood
- “NASA Plays I’ll Be Seeing You Trying to Wake the Mars Rover” by Chloe N. Clark / Banshee Press
- “Small Places” by Majella Cullinane / Meantime
- “Her Heart Was a Chipmunk” by Michael Czyzniejewski / Cleaver Magazine
- “This Because Dog Is God Spelled Backward” by Erinola E. Daranijo / Okay Donkey
- “Blue-Naped Parrots See More Than They Say” by Judy Darley / New Flash Fiction Review
- “Some Guilty Pleasures on This Side of the Border” by Moisés R. Delgado / Craft
- “Family Politics” by Ehiorobo Derek / African Poetry Book Fund Evaristo Prize 2024 Co-Winner
- “Things We Do for Loved Ones” by Thad DeVassie / Vast Literary Press
- “On Loneliness” by Merridawn Duckler / MacQueen’s Quinterly
- “What Would the Aliens Think?” by Ekpenyong Kosisochukwu Collins / SmokeLong Quarterly
- “Roofing in Warm Weather” by Corey Farrenkopf / Brilliant Flash Fiction
- “Based on a True Story” by Epiphany Ferrell / Witcraft
- “Nesting Doll” by Melissa Flores Anderson / Swamp Pink
- “At Once” by Sarah Freligh / Ghost Parachute
- “Lottery” by Scott Garson / Centaur
- “They Fired Up the Laser” by Timothy C. Goodwin / Dishsoap Quarterly
- “After Reading a Newspaper Clipping of Emily Dickinson’s Obituary Online” by Charlotte Hamrick / Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine
- “Five Things She Brought with Her to the End of the World” by Fatema Haque / Hayden’s Ferry Review
- “The Beak” by Robbie Herbst / The Masters Review
- “Trespasser, Singular” by Alex Herod / Trash Cat Lit
- “Acorns / Hard / Underfoot on the Pavement” by D. G. Herring / Splonk
- “A Cock Among the Bathers” by Sara Hills / Bath Flash Fiction Award
- “One Summer” by Zac Hing / Takahē
- “Ledge (Ars Poetica) (Love Poem) (True Story)” by Amorak Huey / The Cincinnati Review
- “The Comeback” by Lincoln Jaques / Micro Madness
- “A Girl Experiments with Being Human” by Ruth Joffre / Barrelhouse
- “A Day in the Zoo” by Brianna Johnson / Emerge Literary Journal
- “Off a Duck’s Back” by Jupiter Jones / Tiny Sparks Everywhere
- “How to Bake a Cake in Outer Space” by Audra Kerr Brown / Moon City Review
- “Enough” by Mike Kilgannon / Bridport Prize
- “Family Night” by Ani King / SmokeLong Quarterly
- “The Long Walk North” by Caitlyn Kinsella / The Citron Review
- “I’ve Been Getting Letters from Santa for Twenty Years and All I’ve Learned Is He’s an Asshole” by Nicola Koh / Okay Donkey
- “Cowboy” by Francesca Leader / Southeast Review
- “Let’s Go Holoholo” by Melissa Llanes Brownlee / Wigleaf
- “Apparitions” by Arthur Mandal / Bending Genres
- “Aunt Lou” by Miriam McEwen / American Literary Review
- “The Way We Love Each Other” by Rebecca Meacham / The Ilanot Review
- “Pristine” by Douglas W. Milliken / Notch Magazine
- “This Is What Always Happens” by Khalid Mitchell / Astrolabe
- “Girl Locks” by Claudia Monpere / Split Lip Magazine
- “The Days the Cartoons Crept Out the TV” by James Montgomery / Micro Madness
- “Never Swim Alone” by Abigail Myers / JMWW
- “The Marionette” by Ivan Niccolai / Ink in Thirds
- “Little Flowers” by Gillian O’Shaughnessy / X-Ray Literary Magazine
- “The Lesson of Flash Floods” by Pamela Painter / Chestnut Review
- “Horsebroken” by Meg Pokrass / Fractured Lit
- “Small Towns” by Sam Rasnake / Bending Genres
- “Alternate Histories of El Salvador or Perhaps the World” by Ruben Reyes, Jr. / Bomb
- “Driving My Seven-Year-Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab” by Emily Rinkema / Bath Flash Fiction Award
- “Brittle Bones” by Belinda Rowe / Gone Lawn
- “Your Childhood Was Witchcraft” by Eden Royce / Cleaver
- “Crossing” by Thaddeus Rutkowski / Rathalla Review
- “An Inexhaustive List of Places Where You Grieved for Your Mother” by Debabrata Sahoo / Vestal Review
- “Daughter Fish” by Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez / The Citron Review
- “Concrete Worm” by Noémi Scheiring-Oláh / Hayden’s Ferry Review
- “A Trip to the Moon” by Nina Schuyler / Flash Fiction Magazine
- “Carnivorous Roads” by Robert Scotellaro / New World Writing Quarterly
- “Roller Coaster House” by Kyle Seibel / Had
- “A Hole in the Glass” by Abhishek Sengupta / The Forge Literary Magazine
- “How Do Crows Say I Love You?” by Beth Sherman / Tiny Molecules
- “It Never Mattered What Happened at Home” by Sumitra Singam / The Forge Literary Magazine
- “What We Do on a Night Like This” by Rachel Smith / Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine
- “The Importance of Stems” by Cheryl Snell / The Dribble Drabble Review
- “Restless Coyote Pilfers the Night and She Does Not Need Your Judgment” by Sarah Sorensen / Jet Fuel Review
- “She Is There” by Eraldo Souza dos Santos / Inkfish Magazine
- “Pebbles” by Sarp Sozdinler / Atlas and Alice
- “The Aquarium” by Anna Stacy / Lunch Ticket
- “The Two Denvers” by Rebecca Starks / Craft
- “Clean Floors” by Dawn Tasaka Steffler / The Welkin Writing Prize
- “Psithurism” by Joshua Michael Stewart / Modern Haiku
- “Prudence” by Christy Stillwell / New Flash Fiction Review
- “Sister, Sister” by Ayotola Tehingbola / Split Lip Magazine
- “This That / That This” by Matthew Tomkinson / 3:AM Magazine
- “Jewel Bearing” by Adam Trodd / Banshee Press
- “Always Tomorrow” by Cathy Ulrich / MoonPark Review
- “Bus Stop” by Rekha Valliappan / A-Minor Magazine
- “Memory / I Send Myself” by Wangũi wa Kamonji / The Decolonial Passage
- “Smoke and Ash” by Jesse Wallis / Hayden’s Ferry Review
- “Memory in Three Acts” by Shannon K. Winston / Jet Fuel Review
- “Splinter” by Didi Wood / Fractured Lit
- “Cliché” by David Yourdon / Atlas and Alice
- “Let Go of the Bones” by Yasmine Yu / Lost Balloon
- “Nascent” by Tara Isabel Zambrano / Identity Theory
- “Layered House” by Lucy Zhang / -ette Review
* Top-10 Spotlighted Stories selected by guest editor Robert Shapard
Praise for the Series
“If you are a writer of any kind, this book is also a must-read because it will only enhance and inspire your own work, particularly through models of stellar openings/endings and meticulous editing.” —JMWW
“Give us succor, these essential stories implore the earth. Give us meaning, they ask the world. We need you and haven’t forgotten you, they say. Forgive us.” —SmokeLong Quarterly
“The best of these fictional vignettes are like a splash of ice water in the face. Wake up, they shout, your life is unspooling. They create their emotional effects with a quick windup and a powerful release, often a final, lingering image.” —Harvard Review
“[T]he beauty of an anthology such as this, pulling together the best of the form, is that you will always encounter something new, something different, something that pushes the boundaries of flash further than before. If this anthology proves nothing else, it is that small fiction in all its forms continues to go from strength to strength, as does the series itself.” —Bath Flash Fiction Award
“The fifty-five authors represented [in BSF 2015] have all triumphed. They’ve sliced open secret passageways within language and kicked readers toward infinity. Yes, we’ve heard it before about the short form, and yes, it’s true, “Less is more,” though here it could be “Less is” or “More is.” What we’re finding, or re-finding, is simply “It is,” and it’s wonderful.” —The Small Press Book Review
“It will be well worth your while to spend a minute or 60 with some of the brightest concise writing available today.” —NewPages
