Today, we are thrilled to publish “A History That Brings Me to You” by Katie M. Flynn, the second-place winner of our Winter Short Story Award for New Writers. This story astounded us. It toggles between the point-of-view of a twelve-year-old girl whose parents are in the midst of a divorce and a neighbor across the way. The manner in which their narratives coalesce—and differ—is what makes this story so beautiful.

“Her father. That’s who her mother had been on the phone with. She knew that tone, that specific tenor of anger—only for him. Her mother hated him, the girl realized. Her mother hated her father. And then she knew it: he would have had to have done something truly terrible to make her mother hate him so, for her to carry this much rage.”

The Watson girl had only been missing a matter of minutes, yet she could feel the tension mounting, the disaster taking shape. Her cousins were calling her name loudly, angrily, like she should reveal herself, but there was no way she was going to do that. At home she’d given up on hide and seek. All the spots in her flat Tulsa house had long ago been scouted and discovered. Her mother had to pretend not to know where she was, and that wasn’t any fun, so the Watson girl played other games. But here, in Mankato, Minnesota, in a game that sprawled her aunt and uncle’s two-bedroom apartment and the mortuary below, hiding spots abounded. At first, she’d wandered the showroom, running her hands along those shiny wooden caskets with their silken insides, considered climbing in. No, that would have been too obvious. So she pushed past the door her uncle had specifically said not to open, the only room in the whole place where she wasn’t supposed to go. It was obvious why, the dead woman lying on a table, her pores showing like caverns through unevenly applied foundation, her cheeks green despite the clownish pink blush. The girl gently poked the woman’s cheek. Then she tried to lift an eyelid, which didn’t come easily, until she saw why—a flesh-colored disc, spiked and holding it in place. She pulled away, the eyelid half raised to terrifying effect, the spiked disc poking out.

She climbed into the waiting coffin, which she assumed belonged to the dead woman, who was not old in the way of a grandmother, but middle-aged like the Watson girl’s mother and very slender in her pale blue skirt suit. The girl liked the color choice, the shade of sky, and it made her like the woman, and she told her so, “I like you,” before she closed the lid, marveling at the chill the white silken fabric pulled from her skin. She was alive, in a dead woman’s box, and she knew she shouldn’t be there. Still, she didn’t get out. She did, however, reach down and remove her shoes, placing them on her chest so she’d be the only thing they’d dirty.

She could hear her cousins, those giants. They were teenage, the girl a senior who played center on the high school’s basketball team and had colossal thighs, always in shorts. The boy was only a year younger and stocky, a football player and a bit of a lady’s man, she’d heard her aunt say to her mother over their afternoon cocktail. He liked to tickle the Watson girl, who was twelve and still had the arachnid legs of a child, to get on top of her and make her laugh until a little pee escaped, a type of torture. He was handsome in a mean way and she was afraid of him. She could hear them on the other side of the door, trying to decide what to do. They agreed to check the yard out front, and she heard them go, and she was glad.

To read the rest of “A History That Brings Me to You” click here.

As part of our celebration of Short Story Month this year, we are studying the ways in which fiction grapples with technology—be it twitter, imagined futures populated by robots, or the unexpected power of the emoji. We would like to start our examination with a list of stories that tackle our relationship with tech. And what better way to read them then on the web? Here are ten stories that have definitely entered the information age, all available and waiting at your fingertips! Browse away.

“The Black Box” by Jennifer Egan

Technology is inextricably intertwined with communication, but how do we know if anyone is really listening? Here is a story about heroism, trust, and a very long data stream that documents the use of technology as espionage.

“Demonman” by Julialicia Case

The winner of our Summer Short Story Award for New Writers, this piece effectively contrasts the (initial) silliness of emojis with the horror of sexual assault. Told from a younger sister’s point of view, she uses emojis as her own language to describe a confusing and changed world.

“Likes” by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Not all stories vilify technology, even when it is the most obvious disconnect between a father and his eleven-year-old daughter. He is constantly baffled by her Instagram account, and he doesn’t understand her social networks, but his willingness to soldier through his own bemusement is a lesson in true goodwill.

“Mika Model” by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi has won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and it’s easy to see why. A detective is trying to decide if an android is human enough to be charged with murder, and the whole world says it isn’t. If you tell yourself something for long enough, can you ever truly come to believe it?

“Quantum Convention” by Eric Schlich

In a million different worlds, there must be a million different versions of yourself. Getting the chance to meet them might seem like an amazing windfall, but you’d better be prepared to face all of your failures, and all of your might-have-beens, and your eventual return to your own life.

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For us, spring is the season of longer days and shorter stories. You have just a little over two weeks left to submit to our Flash Fiction Contest, which will award $3000 and publication to the best story of 1000 words or less. Second and third place stories will be awarded $200 and $100 respectively, plus publication. So polish up those small wonders and send them our way. We can’t wait to be dazzled. Check out the full submission guidelines here.

<<Submit Here>>

Today we are pleased to present the third-place winner of our Short Story Award for New Writers: “Birth Stories” by Sarah Harris Wallman. We were immediately taken with this story which is told in short vignettes that chronicle the experiences of a group of neighborhood mothers in New Haven as the 2016 election draws near.

“Few of us could resist giving a full exegesis of our carefully chosen [baby] names. We liked literary and historical resonance. We dreaded the commonplace. We theorized what high school bullies would do with the raw material of these names; we imagined what they’d sound like in a history book, a profile in the Times, an obituary. These names would survive us when we weren’t around to tell the story of their birth. These names were the portion of destiny we got to choose.”

By the time the EMTs arrived, Clea was propped on her ruined towels with the baby on her chest, the pulsing purple cord still running between them. She didn’t want to cut it. She’d read studies, not that she could quote them just then, but she snarled at the EMTs like a feral raccoon and they agreed to wrap mother and child up together and carry them out on one stretcher. When she got the bill for two ambulance rides (really!), Clea used the fact of live cord to dispute the charge. We were one, she hissed into her phone at the customer service rep, head turned toward the shoulder that did not hold a sleeping Amaryllis, she was plugged in like a damn cell phone.

We all like Clea.

*     *     *

Monica hosted the potlucks at her apartment, once a month or more. They were a godsend. You can’t imagine how we longed for one another’s company, even though motherhood had rusted our conversational mechanism to the point where it was not unpleasant just to compare methods of combatting diaper rash. Most of us had advanced degrees. This was New Haven.

Monica was on her third child, and she knew best of all what we needed. She put out wine and plastic tumblers, a large bowl of rotini in oily walnut pesto. We all brought what we had time to grab: store-bought pies, cheeses, a half bag of clementines. The events of the day were discussed, of course, but some configuration of the women always ended up on the second-floor porch that overlooked the neighborhood, telling birth stories.

To read the rest of “Birth Stories” click here.

Today, we are proud to continue our Debut Author Spotlight series with an essay from Ruth Joffre, whose debut story collection Night Beast is out today from Grove Atlantic. This collection is especially near and dear to our hearts because we had the pleasure of publishing the title story, which won our Fall Fiction Contest judged by Kelly Link. In this essay, Joffre discusses the joys and challenges of finding the perfect cover.

“When my editor at Grove asked me if I had any ideas about what the cover of Night Beast should look like, I admit I felt a bit paralyzed. What single image could represent all the short stories in this collection (which is itself so varied in form and style, including stories written in the second person and the third, the present and the past)?”

Night Beast has always felt like a particularly evocative title. I drew the title of my short story collection from the final story in the book, “Night Beast,” which won The Masters Review’s 2016 Fall Fiction Contest. Neither too specific nor too vague, the phrase “night beast” brings to mind images of a dark, ferocious predator without identifying any particular animal or even requiring the beast to be an animal. As is often the case in the collection, the “beast” can be a product of our own untamed desires. Fierce, territorial, and unrepentant, the beast raises its head when you least expect it, driving the narrator of the title story to pursue an ill-advised affair with her brother’s fiancée, a sleepwalker wrestling with her own demons. It’s beautiful and terrifying and refuses to be restrained.

How, then, to convey all this in a cover?

When my editor at Grove asked me if I had any ideas about what the cover of Night Beast should look like, I admit I felt a bit paralyzed. What single image could represent all the short stories in this collection (which is itself so varied in form and style, including stories written in the second person and the third, the present and the past)? Every writer must go through this: the immediate fear of getting it wrong followed by the elation, however preemptive, at the thought of getting it right. I began to fantasize about what my cover would look like, and eventually I realized that the fantasies were starting to self-segregate into discrete artistic directions.

I chose three to send to my editor.

The first direction was inspired by the artwork that accompanied “Night Beast” when it was first published in The Masters Review. Mysterious and surreal, the photograph features a woman in a white wedding dress walking through a verdant forest. Her back is turned, and she’s climbing a staircase, lifting the dress so the train won’t drag through the dirt; but there’s no one around, and there’s nothing to explain how the bride came to be here. She just is.

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It’s the marvelous month of May. Along with the return of the sun and beautiful blooming things, May is Short Story Month. Every year, we dedicate our May content to a celebration of the short story form. This year, you can look forward to: our Winter Short Story Award winners, an interview with Rita Bullwinkel, whose debut short story collection is out this month, a contribution from Ruth Joffre whose first collection also launches this May, and an essay on the ever-advancing relationship between literature and technology. If you’re still hungry for awesome content that celebrates the short story, there is no shortage of fiction, essays, and interviews in our archives. Check out this interview with Aimee Bender and this essay on character folding by Rebecca Makkai (our Volume VII judge!) to get you started.

Today, we are proud to publish the winner of Ooligan’s Write To Publish Short Fiction Contest: “The High Points” by Craig Kenworthy. We were happy to partner with Ooligan Press again to present another piece of short fiction. In “The High Points,” a woman unexpectedly becomes the guardian of her niece when her sister is abducted by aliens. Together, our narrator and her niece journey to the highest peaks in search of their lost sister and mother.

“But when your mom disappears into outer space, why wouldn’t a six-year-old think the best place to look for her is the highest point in each state?”

It’s rude when people give you things you don’t want. Like a child, for instance. Sure, I told my sister that I would take care of her daughter if anything ever happened to her. But Elaine never smoked, always wore her seatbelt, and wore sensible shoes when crossing the street. What were the chances?

And who expects an alien abduction these days? But that’s what happened. Elaine was lifted into the air, along with seven other patrons of a Starbucks in Centralia, Washington. Right off the outdoor patio. The authorities didn’t even try to make up a cover story. Not after all those cell phone videos hit Twitter. Some people even posted that stuff while it was happening. You’d think one of them would have grabbed Elaine by the leg, tried to pull her down.

I didn’t tell my niece Anna any of that. Not that we talked much at first. It messes you up, becoming a celebrity because your mom involuntarily left Earth for Planet X. And you can blame me for that. But you try raising a kid on a nurse’s aide salary. So, yes, I sold Anna’s story to whoever would pay: tabloids, TV, even some weird website that claimed they had been in touch with the aliens for the past thirty years. All of that goes for college. That’s the deal I made with myself.

Six months after the abduction, Anna brought home a library book about the fifty states. I didn’t think anything of it until her school called to say that she had run off while on a field trip to Mount Rainier National Park. A ranger found her above an area called Paradise, heading toward the mountain, carrying a woman’s shoe. Elaine’s shoe, the one that fell off during the abduction. When Anna got home, she refused to tell me anything.

To read the rest of “The High Points” click here.

Spring is in full bloom and wonderful books by debut authors are sprouting up everywhere. Today, we are proud to feature three reviews of titles that should not be missed this spring. First up, our reviewer Jenessa Abrams discusses A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, a much-lauded debut collection that is out today. She writes: “Brinkley’s brilliant interrogation of what it means to be a man, specifically in the context of the lives of young men separated from their fathers, points to an essential blind spot in our current discourse.”

Next, Tessa Yang reviews Rebekah Frumkin’s first novel, The Comedown: “The Comedown is sprawling, and it is full of intrigue: a vanished father figure, a suitcase full of drug money, a pair of vindictive half-brothers, lots of ill-advised sex. Though the overarching plot can be hard to track, the book delights at the sentence level, where Frumkin masterfully assembles the small details that illustrate two families’ capacities for ruthlessness and love.”

And, finally, Alina Grabowski reviews Ruth Joffre’s debut collection Night Beast, which hits shelves next week. Grabowski writes: “A sense of foreboding threads through these stories, and reading them is like walking through unlit woods, unsure of just what you’ll find. Joffre frequently writes about women who are in trouble, or just a step away from it.”

A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley

In the age of the #MeToo Movement and the worldwide cultural shift, at least in awareness, to the ways in which gender and sexuality inform our experience of living in the world, Jamel Brinkley’s debut collection, A Lucky Man, comprised of tenderly poignant narratives of boys becoming men, of fractured intimacy, of masculinity as learned performance, is vital and necessary.

Brinkley’s brilliant interrogation of what it means to be a man, specifically in the context of the lives of young men separated from their fathers, points to an essential blind spot in our current discourse. We are living in a time where the narrative around men can feel singular or reductive: A man is either a savior or a villain. That is not the way that humanity works. People are more nuanced. This becomes even more salient when we add the dimension of race. Men of color are most often portrayed in popular culture as evil, as aggressor. This is a false narrative built upon a history of racism which perpetuates mass incarceration and violence.

Read more.

The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin

I always have a good feeling about a book that opens with a family tree. Something about the promised sprawl, the delicious intrigue captured in those many dates, arrows, question marks, and crisscrossing lines. Rebekah Frumkin’s debut novel does not disappoint on this front. The Comedown is sprawling, and it is full of intrigue: a vanished father figure, a suitcase full of drug money, a pair of vindictive half-brothers, lots of ill-advised sex. Though the overarching plot can be hard to track, the book delights at the sentence level, where Frumkin masterfully assembles the small details that illustrate two families’ capacities for ruthlessness and love.

Read more.

Night Beast by Ruth Joffre

I was first introduced to Ruth Joffre’s work as an assistant fiction editor at Nashville Review, when we published her story “Some of the Lies I Tell My Children,” in 2016. I was excited to see where her writing would take her, and her debut story collection, Night Beast and Other Stories, does not disappoint. It’s a mysterious and dark book, unafraid of confronting just how bleak life can be. In the title story, the narrator thinks, “…I had the experience not of dread but of knowing that something dreadful was coming and that I’d have to be ready for it.” The same could be said for the reader. A sense of foreboding threads through these stories, and reading them is like walking through unlit woods, unsure of just what you’ll find. Joffre frequently writes about women who are in trouble, or just a step away from it. In “Go West, and Grow Up,” the narrator, a girl who’s been living in the car with her mother for almost a year, narrowly escapes the owner of a dog she’s been petting, a man who slips a hand beneath her coat and says, “Don’t be coy, you must be earning a living somehow.” Read more.

It’s finally feeling like spring, and the world is full of green growing things. Now it’s your turn to create something new, and send it off to one of these amazing events!

FEATURED The Masters Review Flash Fiction Contest

Never before has each word in a submission been worth so much…You might be limited to 1000 words, but the winner will be rewarded with 3000 dollars! Second and third place receive $200 and $100, respectively, and all stories are considered for publication. We’re only looking for previously unpublished stories, but you’re allowed both simultaneous and multiple submissions. Don’t miss it!
Entry Fee: $20 for 2 stories Deadline: May 31

FEATURED Frontier Poetry Industry Prize

If ever there was a time to shine and polish your most magnificent poem, this is it! This prize allows submitters the chance to be read by astoundingly influential people; this year it’s Don Share, Nicole Sealey, and Matt Zapruder. They will collaborate to choose one winning poem, and that winner receives $3000 and publication (Second and third place receive $200 and $100 respectively). Check it out!
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: May 15

Creative Nonfiction Grants

The Whiting Foundation offers a helping hand to authors in the midst of completing a book-length work of nonfiction for a general, not academic, audience by awarding up to eight grants of $40,000. They welcome submissions such as works on history, biography, the sciences, philosophy, travel writing, and even personal essays, but these projects must be under contract to a publisher in the United States. Work must have been ongoing for two years, to ensure that the author can identify upcoming challenges, but any applicants who fulfill all the requirements already know that this is an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Don’t miss out!
Entry Fee: FREE Deadline: May 2

Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize

This amazing prize is available through Duke University, and it’s based on the collaboration between photographer Dorothea Lange and writer Paul Taylor. They’re looking for extended projects that rely on combining words and images, up to eighteen images and fifteen pages! Applications must include a project description, a statement, and a biography. The winner will receive $10,000, a feature story, and their work will be placed in the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. More details here.
Entry Fee: $70 Deadline: May 15

Emerging Writer’s Contest

Ploughshares is now focusing on their commitment to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers, so there’s no better time to submit! This contest is meant to celebrate emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, awarding $2000 and publication to the winners of each category. Carmen Maria Machado is judging fiction, Roxane Gay is judging nonfiction, and Roger Reeves is judging poetry. Guidelines here.
Entry Fee: $24 Deadline: May 15

Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize

If you have a poem to share, Ruminate wants to read it! Judged by the impressive poet Ilya Kaminsky, the first-place prize is $1500 and publication. Each submission is only two poems, 40 lines or less, but there are no limits on the number of entries per person. Submit here.
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: May 15

The Loraine Williams Poetry Prize

Natasha Trethewey is judging this contest for The Georgia Review, and they are looking for a masterful poem! The final winner will receive $1000 and publication, but all submitted poems will be considered for publication (at $4 a line). Learn more here.
Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: May 15

Prophecy Creek Book Award in Speculative Fiction

If you write your fiction with a futuristic or supernatural bent, this is the contest you’ve been waiting for! Hidden River Press is looking for an original unpublished work of speculative fiction, and the winner will receive $1000 and publication. Make a note that submissions need to include a brief biography, outline, and full synopsis along with the full manuscript! More details here.
Entry Fee: $22 Deadline: May 15

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We would like to offer another warm thank you to everyone who submitted to our Winter Short Story Award for New Writers. We received an overwhelming amount of incredible fiction, and we truly enjoyed reading each and every one of your stories. We are proud to announce the winners and honorable mentions for this award. The winner will receive $3000 and publication online. Second and third place stories will be awarded publication and $200 and $100 respectively. All winners and honorable mentions will receive agency review. All three of our winning stories will publish on the blog this May.

Today, we are proud to present “The Deca-life Crisis” by Jessi Lewis as the latest installment in our New Voices series. In this story, hundreds of children each year mysteriously turn into pieces of coral by their tenth birthdays. Along with this comes an irrepressible urge for these children to find new homes in the sea. This piece is told from the point of view of a mother whose son, Luca, is slowly hardening.

“We didn’t have much time left together on land. He would soon lose his voice, then his comfort on asphalt, and then he’d walk into the Atlantic and sink. I knew this, but I was holding out. Denial is the finest feeling—confident, ignorant, deliciously stubborn. Hardening.”

I was buckling my seatbelt in the station wagon when I said to Luca, “I wish you hadn’t hardened yourself.” Really, I meant this in two ways, but he was nine and only understood the calcium carbonate that was developing across his skin and what that meant. My son’s physical mutation was now obvious. A harsh, cracking crust stretched from his brow to his neck and tightened his spine. His skin was losing flexibility, and the edges of his nostrils and eyelids were sharp.

Luca held his breath for a few seconds, looked out the window slowly, then said, “Mama, Laura wouldn’t give me one of the sandwiches because she’s a bitch. It’s okay that I said that because she is one.”

We were leaving a birthday party early because of the scuffle. Laura, the unblinking girl in oversized shorts, had called him “ocean trash” and then “coral freak” in the same breath. The parents in the room held their breath, probably afraid to agree that my son was resembling coral more every day. There in the car, I couldn’t help but think that the Laura-girl did deserve Luca’s label for her.

“You want to be better than the worst person at the party,” I said, anyway, wondering if this could sink in, or if it even mattered that I said it given the circumstances. Our circumstances.

Yellow balloons tangled on the mailbox next to my driver’s door and Luca watched them, mesmerized. I turned over the engine to leave for home.

“But,” I added, “she wasn’t right to call you that.”

“She’s like her parents, right? They say mean things probably. Kids are like their parents.”

My son nodded at his own words, still staring. I drove us away from the balloons.

Luca would not discuss the change in his body and skin. At the time, it didn’t seem healthy to force it, though I’ll never know if that was true. I didn’t like to talk about it either, so I guess he had a point there about parents.

I watched my son in the rearview mirror and the hard disc that had formed over his forehead. He had a gravel quality now. The skin tone that we shared was now covered, as though someone had closed the screen door on him and it stuck.

We didn’t have much time left together on land. He would soon lose his voice, then his comfort on asphalt, and then he’d walk into the Atlantic and sink. I knew this, but I was holding out. Denial is the finest feeling—confident, ignorant, deliciously stubborn. Hardening.

I was hardening too.

He wouldn’t be able to fully open his jaw the next day.

To read the rest of “The Deca-life Crisis” click here.