Contests Archives

Tiny Baba

Steph KarpJanuary 1, 2021March 22, 2021

Baba was tiny. Not short—diminutive. So tiny she had to sit in a booster seat at the table. So tiny she had to hold my pinky as we walked, even in her five-inch platform Mary Janes. You could barely hear Baba, she was so tiny and far away. She would...

Contests Current Features Fiction Issue 45

Wandering

Jared CarlsonDecember 31, 2020August 22, 2021

I’m lying on a gurney, being wheeled down a long hallway with overhead fluorescent lights, while chewing on—what I think—is a tooth. If I had to guess, then maybe a bicuspid, the ones in between the canines and molars. A nurse with short curly brown hair is holding my hand,...

Contests Current Features Fiction Issue 45

In Dayton, Ohio, in 1919

John HarnDecember 31, 2020April 21, 2021

Paul married a stenographer. A girl from church with ice-blue eyes and sandy hair braided in the modern way. He was nineteen, assembling pumps for Barney & Smith, the giant rail-car maker. They talked about things over tea. Big things in low voices. They liked the idea of in-laws and...