Maryland Press

Maryland Press actively publishes E-chapbooks of literary works. We call these Mini-Es. Our publishing model is a bit different. All readers can “pay what they can” for a given Mini-E. We hope to bring the world of contemporary fiction, poetry and flash memoir directly to your computer screen, E-reader or Kindle in small bite form. Check out the brand new Dallas Woodburn collection of stories How My Parents Fell in Love.

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:
Gisele Gehre Bomfim
April Stettner

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).

Buy Current Edition (2023)

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. When nominations are open, a submission button will be active on this page.

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

AMBER SPARKS is the author of an upcoming novel, Happy People Don’t Live Here, and four collections of short fiction, including And I Do Not Forgive You: Revenges and Other Stories and The Unfinished World. Her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, Slate, Tin House, Granta, The Cut, and elsewhere. Her last collection was longlisted for the Story Prize, and she received a residency fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

 

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 ƌtepoti 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.

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 MoisĂ©s 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 Jurjević / 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
  •  “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
  • “Northbound Highway 101” by Chi S. Tsu / Longleaf Review
  • “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 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