Masthead
Best Small Fictions Editors& Advisory Board 2024
Guest Editor:
Amber Sparks
Series Editor:
Nathan Leslie
Managing Editor:
Michelle Elvy
Assistant Editors:
Amy Barnes
Myna Chang
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:
Adelaide Kung
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.
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 tenth 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), and Story Prize longlister Amber Sparks (2024).
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 2024 edition are closed. Submissions for the 2025 edition will open on November 15, 2024, and close on January 31, 2025, and will consider pieces published in the 2024 calendar year. Please email submissions to fictionsnlbestsmall2019 [at] gmail [dot] com
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. Please send all 2025 nominations to fictionsnlbestsmall2019 [at] gmail [dot] com
Distribution
The 2023, and 2024 editions are available in paperback distributed through Ingram, Asterism, and Alternating Current direct; in hardcover distributed through Ingram; and in ebook distributed through Ingram and OverDrive. Ingram 's print bookseller terms are 50% with free returns accepted. Paperback orders direct through Alternating Current are available to booksellers for 50%, free shipping, free returns, with invoicing and purchase-ordering options available. Please email info [at] altcurrentpress [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 took over publication and published the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 editions. Alternating Current Press took over publishing the series with the 2023 edition and will publish the 2024 edition.
2024 Guest Editor
Series Editor
Managing Editor
2024 Best Small Fictions Selections
- "And the Crowd Goes" by Phoenix Alexander / Arcturus*
- "The Year of the Flood" by Sudha Balagopal / Journal of Compressed Creative Arts*
- "The Matchbook" by Aimee Bender / Matchbook Stories*
- "Red Pilgrims" by Renee Chen / Trampset*
- "The Moon Is a White Corn Tortilla, the Night a Sizzling Comal, and the Stars Are Parmesan Cheese Because God Loves Quesadillas with His Nightly Cafecito" by Moisés R. Delgado / Split Lip Magazine*
- "Love 1992: A Catechism" by Deesha Philyaw / Fractured Lit*
- "Lipshine #18 Champagne Gold" by Val Rigodon / Fairy Tale Review*
- "Were" by Kathleen Rooney / Heavy Feather Review*
- "Timetable for Learning to Eat Alone" by Lauren D. Woods / Moon City Review*
- "When You Visit Manhattan on Saturday and Your Boyfriend Who Lives in Queens Says He Can't Come" by Nathan Xie / Craft*
- "The Good Prizes" by Daniel Addercouth / New Flash Fiction Review
- "Swings and Roundabouts" by Mikki Aronoff / Emerge Literary Journal
- "Tonight, I Might Commit the Most Grievous Crime" by Eniola Abdulroqeeb ArĂłwĂłlĂČ / Anmly
- "Back When I Was Drinking" by Tom Bailey / Ploughshares
- "Tijuana" by Victoria Ballesteros / Your Impossible Voice
- "Carve" by Allison Field Bell / The Bridport Prize Anthology 2023
- "Cuttlefish" by Patricia Q. Bidar / Scratching the Sands: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2023
- "There Are a Million Ways to Say Goodbye, and How Can I Possibly Choose?" by Lindy Biller / The Welkin Writing Prize
- "Eight Story Ideas" by T. J. Butler / Dating Silky Maxwell
- "Like Real Women Do" by Avitus B. Carle / Okay Donkey
- "The Pink Rats inside Us" by Meg Cass / Anmly
- "In the Blink of an Eye" by Christine H. Chen / JMWW
- "Bushfire" by Sherryl Clark / Flash Frontier
- "Something" by Dan Crawley / Flash Frog
- "Tunneling" by Josh Denslow / Electric Literature
- "Quiet" by Cristi Donoso / The Citron Review
- "Year of the Farrier" by Lynn Edge / MacQueen's Quinterly
- "The Whirlpool Duet" by Becky Ellis / Northwest Review
- "First Generation" by Olivia Fantini / Ecotone
- "Pears" by Jennifer Fliss / Ruby
- "Perpetual Motion" by Thaisa Frank / Gargoyle Magazine
- "Cancerous Sneak" by Helen Freeman / The Ekphrastic Review
- "Sellinger" by Scott F. Gandert / Apple Valley Review
- "Body" by Scott Garson / MoonPark Review
- "Nice Little Girls" by Jo Gatford / Cease, Cows
- "Boilermaker" by J. W. Goll / New Flash Fiction Review
- "Penny, Barbara, Ruth, Irene" by Amy Grote / Craft
- "The Last Goodbye in the City of Electric Longing" by L. M. Guay / Small Wonders
- "Ojuju-Kalaba" by Ola W. Halim / SmokeLong Quarterly
- "The Times I'll Trade Time with the Crows" by Joel Hans / Atlas and Alice
- "The Abortion Clinic for People Caught in Folk Tales" by Pauline Holdsworth / Pithead Chapel
- "I've Never Heard of a Wind Stone" by Jonathan Humphrey / Contemporary Haibun Online
- "Already among the Clouds" by Ibrahim BabĂĄtĂșndĂ© Ibrahim / Necessary Fiction
- "As in the Days of Noah" by Bethany Jarmul / Cease, Cows
- "Unprecedented Weather Patterns" by Bethany Jarmul / Gone Lawn
- "Uncle Soul" by Andrea JurjeviÄ / Centaur
- "Daily Pilgrimage" by Angie Kang / Sundog Lit
- "Motherland" by Volha Kastsiuk / At the Bay / I Te Kokoru
- "Spaceship in a Bottle" by Robert P. Kaye / Moon City Review
- "Rehydration" by Sean Wai Keung / Sine Theta Magazine
- "Before I Used Chairs" by Max Kruger-Dull / Quarterly West
- "A Door Is a Secret, Revealed" by Kathryn Kulpa / Fictive Dream
- "Bog Iron" by Shane Larkin / New Flash Fiction Review
- "Imagining the Woman Known Only as Wife on This Eroded Tombstone in the Old Butler Cemetery off Route 194" by Janice Leadingham / Reckon Review
- "The Wedding Photographer Photographer" by Matt Leibel / Aquifer: The Florida Review
- "Seventeen" by Joshua Jones Lofflin / The Baltimore Review
- "The Buddha Who Couldn't Feel and the Fish on the Floor" by Emily Lu / Heavy Feather Review
- "Amen: The End of Men" by Owolusi Lucky / Reckon Review
- "The Oomancer" by Lorette C. Luzajic / Litro Magazine
- "At Weekends Mama's Carnivore" by Rosaleen Lynch / Ruby
- "Buoyant" by Avra Margariti / Lost Balloon
- "House Story" by Michael Mark / Journal of Compressed Creative Arts
- "Whale Song" by Jeff Martin / The Masters Review
- "Eminent Domain" by Jolene McIlwain / Belt Magazine / Sidle Creek
- "Fulfilling" by Fiona McKay / New Flash Fiction Review
- "Sabine" by Catherine McNamara / Fictive Dream
- "And Eat It" by Faith Merino / Sundog Lit
- "Solar Flare" by Claudia Monpere / Atlas and Alice
- "Leap" by Sarah Fawn Montgomery / Necessary Fiction
- "Demolition" by Will Musgrove / Identity Theory
- "Into the White" by Gillian O'Shaughnessy / Fractured Lit
- "Midwest Oasis" by Briar Ripley Page / Traveler's Tales / Ice Queen Magazine
- "Of Foliage" by Mandira Pattnaik / Birch Bark Editing
- "Hatching Moths" by Emily Pegg / The Masters Review
- "You-Are-Not-Mad Lib" by Jennifer Perrine / The Maine Review
- "The Bread of Life" by Katherine Plumhoff / Heavy Feather Review
- "Once upon a Time in West Auckland by Hayden Pyke / Flash Frontier
- "A Dog Story Doggedly Told" by Philip Raisor / Midway Journal
- "When You Receive the Notice to Policyholders Regarding the Liquidation of Your Insurance Company" by Colleen Rothman / Maudlin House
- "The Replacement" by Paul Rousseau / Craft
- "Northbound Highway 101" by Chi S. / Longleaf Review
- "Close Calls" by Robert Scotellaro / Quick Adjustments
- "The Selkie of the City Tells All" by J. D. Scott / Fairy Tale Review
- "A New Kind of Dan" by Kyle Seibel / Trampset
- "That Summer" by Helen Sheehy / Wrong Turn Lit
- "This Town" by Jeanine Skowronski / MoonPark Review
- "Feeding Time" by Jen Soong / Already Gone: 40 Stories of Running Away
- "All of Us, Shaking" by L. Soviero / Emerge Literary Journal
- "Googling Liver Failure While Adeline Pours Another Whiskey" by Jenny Stalter / Ghost Parachute
- "My Landlord and I" by Michael Hugh Stewart / The Cincinnati Review
- "Three Ways Out" by Adam Straus / Trampset
- "Lanternfly" by K. P. Taylor / Scrawl Place
- "The Girl with the Third Leg" by Christina Tudor / Gargoyle Magazine
- "I'm Learning How to Die Out" by Deb Olin Unferth / The Hopkins Review
- "Möbius Band" by Jie Wang / Bone Parade
- "Life Cycle" by Max Wheeler / Astrolabe
- "Gabapentin" by Tom Williams / Revolution John
- "Toy Collector" by Rebecca Winterer / Identity Theory
- "No Clubs" by Joel Worford / Hayden's Ferry Review
- "Last Day Cupcakes" by Jeffrey Yamaguchi / Okay Donkey
- "There Are Hundreds of Beautiful Asian Women Waiting to Meet You" by Tessa Yang / Craft
- "Tea and Seeds" by Yasmine Yu / The Cincinnati Review
*Top 10 Spotlighted Stories, as selected by 2024 guest editor Amber Sparks
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 havenât 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. Theyâve sliced open secret passageways within language and kicked readers toward infinity. Yes, weâve heard it before about the short form, and yes, itâs true, "Less is more," though here it could be "Less is" or "More is." What weâre finding, or re-finding, is simply "It is," and itâs 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