The Best Small Fictions


Book Description




A Small Fiction


Book Description

At night, the trees whispered. Told ghost stories, their leaves trembling. Remembered the fallen. Joked. Dry laughter rustled the dark. What happens when a writer wants to tell a hundred stories but doesn’t have the time to write a hundred books? They write the seeds of those stories and cast them to the wind... A Small Fiction presents a collection of illustrated micro-fiction, all told in 140 characters or fewer. From the humorous to the bleak, the dystopian to the dog-filled, there’s a story for every occasion, and an occasion for every story.




The Best Small Fictions 2015


Book Description

It takes many small things to make something big. Fifty-five acclaimed and emerging writers-including Emma Bolden, Ron Carlson, Kelly Cherry, Stuart Dybek, Blake Kimzey, Roland Leach, Bobbie Ann Mason, Diane Williams, and Hiromi Kawakami-have made the debut of The Best Small Fictions 2015 something significant, something worthwhile, and something necessary. Featuring spotlights on Pleiades journal and Michael Martone, this international volume-with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler serving as guest editor and award-winning editor Tara L. Masih as series editor-is a celebration of the diversity and quality captured in fiction forms fewer than 1,000 words. Small fictions by Adam O Fallon Price, Anna Lea Jancewicz, Anya Yurchyshyn, Blake Kimzey, Bobbie Ann Mason, Brent Rydin, Casandra Lopez, Catherine Moore, Chris L. Terry, Claire Joanne Huxham, Dan Gilmore, Dan Moreau, Danielle McLaughlin, Dave Petraglia, David Mellerick Lynch, Dawn Raffel, Dee Cohen, Diane Williams, Emma Bolden, George Choundas, Hiromi Kawakami, J. Duncan Wiley, James Claffey, James Keegan, Jane Liddle, Jane Swan, Jeff Streeby, Jonathan Humphrey, Julia Strayer, Kathryn Savage, Kelly Cherry, Lauren Becker, Leesa Cross-Smith, Lindsey Drager, Lisa Marie Basile, Maureen Seaton, Michael Garriga, Michael Martone, Misty Ellingburg, Naomi Telushkin, Randall Brown, Roland Leach, Ron Carlson, Ron Riekki, Rusty Barnes, Seth Brady Tucker, Stefanie Freele, Stephen Orloske, Stuart Dybek, Valerie Vogrin, William Todd Seabrook, Yennie Cheung, Zack Bean"




The Best Small Fictions: 2019 Anthology


Book Description

The Best Small Fictions anthology, now in its fifth year, presents one hundred and forty-­six pristinely crafted pieces from an array of authors representing twenty-­six nations and six continents. These short, elliptical works are varied and edgy, sorrowful and triumphant, provocative and visionary. The small fictions enclosed within this volume are always vibrant. They scintillate. They linger. With each story brief enough to savor at a stoplight or quick coffee break, the tales contained within 2019's The Best Small Fictions promise to leave a mark.




Tiny Crimes


Book Description

Forty very short stories that reimagine the genre of crime writing from some of today’s most imaginative and thrilling writers “An intriguing take on crime/noir writing, this collection of 40 very short stories by leading and emerging literary voices—Amelia Gray, Brian Evenson, Elizabeth Hand, Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg and more—investigates crimes both real and imagined. Despite their diminutive size, these tales promise to pack a punch.” —Chicago Tribune, 1 of 25 Hot Books for Summer Tiny Crimes gathers leading and emerging literary voices to tell tales of villainy and intrigue in only a few hundred words. From the most hard–boiled of noirs to the coziest of mysteries, with diminutive double crosses, miniature murders, and crimes both real and imagined, Tiny Crimes rounds up all the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, too. With illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook and flash fiction by Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Amelia Gray, Adam Sternbergh, Yuri Herrera, Julia Elliott, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Evenson, Charles Yu, Laura van den Berg, and more, Tiny Crimes scours the underbelly of modern life to expose the criminal, the illegal, and the depraved.




The Best Small Fictions Anthology 2021


Book Description

The 2021 volume of Best Small Fictions presents its richest collection of stories yet. These short works capture in all their multifaceted glory, the singular times in which we live. At times hilarious, catastrophic, philosophical -- and ever original -- this year's Best Small Fictions is a must-have, must-read gem of an anthology.




The Best Small Fictions 2018


Book Description

Fiction. Poetry. THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS is the first contemporary anthology solely devoted to honoring the best short hybrid fiction published in a calendar year. The series, which began in 2015, has featured an international group of both seasoned and emerging authors who work in flash, micro fiction, prose poetry, haibun, and other hybrid forms. Tara L. Masih founded this annual series and now serves as consulting editor. For our 2018 edition, we welcomed Sherrie Flick as series editor and Pushcart Prize winning author Aimee Bender as guest editor. This latest edition includes 53 works by writers such as Lydia Davis, Rumaan Alam, Diane Williams, Kathy Fish, Matt Bell, Aleksandar Hemon, Maxim Loskutoff, Michael Parker, Meg Pokrass, Deb Olin Unferth, and Desiree Cooper. Past guest editors have included Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler (2015), PEN/Malamud Award winner and O. Henry Prize winner Stuart Dybek (2016), Rea Award and PEN/Malamud Award winner Amy Hempel (2017).




Micro Fiction


Book Description

Ten years ago, Jerome Stern, director of the writing program at Florida State, initiated the World's Best Short Short Story Contest. Stories were to be about 250 words long; first prize was a check and a crate of oranges. Two to three thousand stories began to show up annually in Tallahassee, and National Public Radio regularly broadcast the winner. But, more important, the Micro form turned out to be contagious; stories of this "lack of length" now dot the literary magazines. The time seemed right, then, for this anthology, presenting a decade of contest winners and selected finalists. In addition, Stern commissioned Micros, persuading a roster of writers to accept the challenge of completing a story in one page. Jesse Lee Kercheval has a new spin on the sinking of the Titanic; Virgil Suarez sets his sights on the notorious Singapore caning; George Garrett conjures up a wondrous screen treatment pitch; and Antonya Nelson invites us into an eerie landscape. Verve and nerve and astonishing variety are here, with some wild denouements. How short can a Micro be, you wonder. Look up Amy Hempel's contribution, and you'll see.




Where the Dog Star Never Glows


Book Description

In this impressive debut collection, Tara Masih shows an intimate sense of understanding her characters' innermost feelings, creating a memorable map of diverse characters that span the globe and several eras. Ghosts dance, butterflies swarm, men crystallize, the sun disappears, and water plays a role in both destruction and repair of the soul. With an unflinching eye, a mythical awareness of the natural world, and poetic, crafted prose, Masih examines the dark recesses of the mind and heart, which often leads to a small or great triumph or illumination that will resonate long after the last page is turned.




Sudden Fiction


Book Description

Presents over seventy short stories five pages long or less by such American authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, Langston Hughes, and Raymond Carver, and includes authors' commentary on the genre.