Announcement of the 2024 ‘Best Small Fictions’ Selections

We are thrilled to announce that selections have been made for the 2024 Best Small Fictions anthology. Congratulations to these amazing pieces of short fiction by these terrific authors whose work will be included in the annual anthology. The 2024 edition will be available from Alternating Current Press this fall.

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.

• “The Good Prizes” by Daniel Addercouth / New Flash Fiction Review
• “And the Crowd Goes” by Phoenix Alexander / Arcturus
• “Swings and Roundabouts” by Mikki Aronoff / Emerge Literary Journal
• “Tonight, I Might Commit the Most Grievous Crime” by Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arówólò / Anmly
• “Back When I Was Drinking” by Tom Bailey / Ploughshares
• “The Year of the Flood” by Sudha Balagopal / Journal of Compressed Creative Arts
• “Tijuana” by Victoria Ballesteros / Your Impossible Voice
• “Carve” by Allison Field Bell / The Bridport Prize Anthology 2023
• “The Matchbook” by Aimee Bender / Matchbook Stories
• “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
• “Red Pilgrims” by Renee Chen / Trampset
• “Bushfire” by Sherryl Clark / Flash Frontier
• “Something” by Dan Crawley / Flash Frog
• “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
• “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 Babátúndé 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
• “Love 1992: A Catechism” by Deesha Philyaw / Fractured Lit
• “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
• “Lipshine #18 Champagne Gold” by Val Rigodon / Fairy Tale Review
• “Were” by Kathleen Rooney / Heavy Feather Review
• “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
• “Timetable for Learning to Eat Alone” by Lauren D. Woods / Moon City Review
• “No Clubs” by Joel Worford / Hayden’s Ferry Review
• “When You Visit Manhattan on Saturday and Your Boyfriend Who Lives in Queens Says He Can’t Come” by Nathan Xie / Craft
• “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

Thanks to these authors for sharing their incredible work with us and for trusting us to share it with the rest of the world. Congratulations on the selections.