Flash Flood Winner October 2026 – Bryce Berkowitz
Bryce Berkowitz Leaving Montana for Indiana On a pink-gray highway outside The Badlands near Wall, South Dakota, a Bronco passes in the slow lane, cigarette smoke pours thru its cracked [...]
Laura O’Gorman Schwartz
Laura O'Gorman Schwartz The Lemon Tree Runner-up for the 2026 American Literary Review Award in Fiction, Judged by Olufunke Grace Bankole I hoisted a lemon tree onto my shopping cart [...]
Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim
Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim A Hymen Tale Winner of the 2026 American Literary Review Award in Fiction, Judged by Olufunke Grace Bankole There is something about returning to a place where [...]
Daisy Cashin
Daisy Cashin These Janky Ol' Wings I am twenty-seven years old, zombie-eyed, and thin, biking circles around Hampton Park in Charleston, South Carolina. The May sun, dragged to its perch [...]
Paula Motta
Paula Motta How to Be a Stargazer See your mother answer the door. The man standing there, holding the pizza. Ignore how she shifts her weight, how her fingers drift [...]
Jeffrey Amos
Jeffrey Amos Witness Trees The Town Charter. The town of Ada, Texas was founded in the shade of an apple tree on August 15th, 1887, when Arthur Gentry, Caleb Mills, [...]
Jeff McLaughlin
Jeff McLaughlin Safe There was the writing spider poised ominously over the back door. There was the textured, colorless snakeskin coiled beside the front sidewalk, papery to the touch, it [...]
“Contrafabula” by Nancy Huggett
My mother didn’t end up in the hospital with an unknown diagnosis that quickly turned to cancer. The doctor didn’t draw black blood. The moon was not full, never full, [...]
“Growth” by Catherine Reedy
The trouble began the day after it happened. I barely felt anything, but something broke through my right pinky’s skin. It was green, dew-wettened. I tried tweezing. The tip lengthened [...]
Terry Engel
Terry Engel Maps My mother waited for me as I pushed her wheelchair into the bedroom. I helped her up from the bed, but she refused to sit, and she [...]
Lauren Barbato
Lauren Barbato The Great Renunciation Winner of the 2025 American Literary Review Award in Fiction, Judged by Kimberly Garza When Lian traded the dharma for a baby, I’d just hung [...]
Marina Ramil
Marina Ramil Santo Malo, or Patronage of the Lost When Constanza is under the covers, scenes of fowl being plucked alive play out behind her eyes. It’s not carnivore’s guilt; [...]