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).

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, 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.

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"

Leaving her New England family and bakery job to pursue a new life in Des Moines, restless twenty-three-year-old Vivette corresponds with a fellow seeker of a meaningful life throughout a cross-country journey marked by secrets, decisions, and compromises shared over pool tables, postcards, and shots of whiskey. Original.

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.

Presents a selection of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.