Best Small Fictions
Best Small Fictions Editors
& Advisory Board 2020
Series Editor:
Guest Editor:
Kwame Dawes
Assistant Editor:
Michelle Elvy
Consulting Editors:
TBA
Senior General Advisory Board:
Michael Cocchiarale
Kathy Fish
X. J. Kennedy
Pamela Painter
Robert Shapard
Mary M. Slechta
James Thomas
Clare MacQueen
General Advisory Board:
TBA
Interns:
Gisele Gehre Bomfim
John Strohl
Founding Editor:
Tara Lynn Masih
About
The 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 sixth year of existence, Best Small Fictions features the best micro fiction, flash fiction, haibun stories and prose poetry from around the world.
Founded by Tara L. Masih, Best Small Fictions is now steered by series editor Nathan Leslie. Guest editors have included Pulitzer Prize-winning 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) and, most recently, PEN/Faulkner nominee Rilla Askew (2019).
Submission Guidelines
Editors are encouraged to send their five best works of flash and micro fiction, haibun stories and prose poems published in 2019. Submissions open November 11th, 2019 and run until January 10th, 2020. We encourage an eclectic array of styles and approaches. We love work featuring memorable imagery, characterization and language.
Submissions should be within 1000 words, however this is an approximate guideline and we ask editors to use their own discretion. Submissions may be submitted as word documents, pdfs, or links to the published work.
Praise
"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."
"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.”
“[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.”
"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."