Category: Short Fiction

The Girl with Her Heart in a Box

Emily Algar

There once was a girl who kept her heart in a box. She met a man and wanted to show him her heart. She opened the box, and took out her heart, piece by piece, laying it on the floor for him to see. You see, another man had once Read more

Emily Algar

Emily Frances Algar is a journalist and writer. She has experience in the music industry working as the A&R on the Grammy Nominated Album (Best Folk Album) Front Porch by artist Joy Williams. Emily has been published in a number of print and digital publications including Atwood Magazine, American Songwriter, and Record Collector magazine. She specializes in both long and short-form features as well as interviews and reviews. She has written pieces ranging from the commercialization of feminism and feminism in popular culture, critiques surrounding freedom of speech and the #MeToo movement as well as recently interviewing refugees from Iran. Emily has a Masters in International Security from Oxford Brookes University. Her thesis looked at the extent to which the media shaped public opinion during the Vietnam and Iraq (2003) wars.

Loving a Dangerous Man

Tanya Elizabeth Egeness Epp Schmid

I read in a magazine that women fall in love for three reasons. We fall in love with the Hero, the Entertainer, or the Caregiver. So, was he the football hero, the clown at the party, or the guy who offered to carry your groceries? I fell in love with Read more

Tanya Elizabeth Egeness Epp Schmid

Tanya Elizabeth Egeness Epp Schmid was a Doctor of Oriental Medicine until 2014 when she started a permaculture farm. Her work has appeared in Valparaiso Fiction Review, Sky Island Journal, Canary Literary Magazine, Whistling Shade Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. Tanya was long-listed in Pulp Literature’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest, and her work has appeared in two anthologies: Poet’s Choice Global Warming Anthology, and Quillkeeper’s Summer Solstice Anthology 2021. She is a teacher of Kyudo (Zen archery) and the author of “Tanya’s Collection of Zen Stories” (2018).

My Mother in the Afterlife

Adrienne Pine

When my mother died, the vast weather of anger surrounding her like a force of nature dissolved and disappeared as if overnight. The change was astonishing. My father had his difficulties, but a constant display of anger was not one of them. In the old days, I might have gone Read more

Adrienne Pine

Adrienne Pine's creative nonfiction has been published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Tale of Four Cities, The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, and other venues.

Marriage in the Sun

Elizabeth Markley

Robert was passed out in the bed. Jackie stared at her drunken husband with a mix of anger, pity, and relief. The anger was directed solely at Robert – he had started the fight, after all. And he was the one who lost a thousand dollars at the casino. But Read more

Elizabeth Markley

Elizabeth Markley is a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been previously published in The Write Launch, The Mighty Line, Cleaning Up Glitter, Haunted Waters Press, and Castabout Literary Magazine. When she is not writing she is kept busy by her children, two rambunctious boys under the age of four.

Floating on Tires

Jerri Jerreat

I lost my shoes in Ecuador. But I lost Da’uud in the swamp. I remember how his long lashes blinked back dampness the day we were married, his borrowed clothes pressed, his hair too closely trimmed, everything scrubbed till it shone. His parents were quite pleased; my parents were too. Read more

Jerri Jerreat

Jerri Jerreat’s fiction has appeared in The Yale Review Online, The New Quarterly, The Penmen Review, The Ottawa Arts Review, The Antigonish Review, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, The Dalhousie Review, Room, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction and in four anthologies: Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (World Weaver Press): Solarpunk Winters; in Nevertheless: Tesseracts 21 (Edge Publishing); and in a collection of international eco fiction, Solarpunk: Dalla Disperazione Alla Strategia, (Future Fiction). Her play was a finalist in the Newmarket National Ten Minute Play Festival, 2019.

The Silver Sharpie Prophecy

J. L. Perez

The prophecy is written in silver sharpie on the girls’ bathroom wall, “Jamey Jenson Class Whore ’94”. Jamey’s stomach lurches as the words sink in. She wants to puke. Instead, she pulls down her pants and sits on the toilet, wishing she could flush herself down the sewer, too. It’s Read more

J. L. Perez

J.L Perez is an emerging fiction author who lives high in the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Her work is often dark and brutal; inspired by the secrets people keep and the social issues that shape us. She never skis but loves hiking the Rockies and binging on Star Trek whilst sipping Earl Grey in her footie pajamas. Her work can be found in Plains Paradox, and The Same Online Literary Journal.

Stephanie’s Station

Paula R. Hilton

Stephanie’s right hand was stuck inside the door of a baby blue Lexus. While she was in no pain—that would come later—she couldn’t wiggle her fingers. She worried they’d no longer be three-dimensional once the door opened again. In the front seat, the grownups talked with an easy camaraderie about Read more

Paula R. Hilton

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Feminine Collective, The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans.

She Gives Me Life

Michel Bordeau

“Non-existence I call the beginning of Heaven and Earth. Existence I call the mother of individual beings,” Tao Te Ching. It had been sweltering hot all day, in the hundreds the radio said. I didn’t see much of the outside as Mama pulled down blinds in every room to keep us from roasting Read more

Michel Bordeau

My name is Michel Bordeau, aka Area Frenchman. I am a Therapist and an Education Coach in private practice in Atlanta. Born in France, I have spent half my life in the US. I am culturally French and academically American, so you can safely assume that I know a thing or two about love (gender respectful, validating, unconditional, non-threatening) and the pleasures of life (many friends, much cheese, little w(h)ine). When I don't blog about mansplaining, teen assertiveness, guru shaming, toxic work environments and toxic people, motherhood, mindful parenting, immigrant entrepreneurs, bipolar disorder and body dysmorphic disorder, I dedicate my time speaking about the lessons I have learned as a therapist and a coach. I am the host of Le Kindness Couch on Youtube. I created this channel to demonstrate that today's therapeutic modalities are kind, validating, and solution-focused. We don't read mind or blame your mom for everything.