Latest:
The Ilanot Review, Parents: Prose Edition, Spring, 2024. Another story loosely based on real events.
Bridport Prize, Highly Commended 2023. Anthology of winners available here.
Shortlisted in New Flash Fiction Review’s 2023 Flash Fiction Prize.
Barely a Sound
Selected by judge Peter Ho Davies as one of the top ten stories to be included in The Masters Review Anthology XI. Now Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org.
rats
Longlisted by Reflex Press for their final flash fiction contest, winter, 2022. Publication date will be any day in January-February as they post the Top 50 in random order, culminating in the top four finalists. UPDATE: Sadly, after years of being a top publisher of flash fiction, Reflex Fiction closed up shop for good and as of 2024 had shut down their website.
Fourth Grade Science Lesson, Chickasaw City, Alabama
A huge thank you to judge Emily DeVane for awarding this 300 word piece third place in the International Bath Flash Fiction Award contest and for BFFA’s nominating me for Best Small Fictions, 2023. You can read judge’s comments here, the story here, and order the anthology here.
When Rylee’s class plants papery, brown bulbs in mason jars, she’s sure nothing will come of it.
from “Fourth Grade Science Lesson, Chickasaw City, Alabama”
Dolores Tells Charlie She’s Going to the Gym
My 250 word microfiction piece won Spider Road Press’s 2021 Web Microfiction Award, appeared in their charity zine PARE, and was nominated for 2021 Best Small Fictions. You can read it here.
“She eats fries to the sounds of other people’s epiphanies.”
from “Dolores Tells Charlie She’s Going to the Gym”
When the Solid Gives Way
100 Word Story, September 4, 2021.
Quenched
Microfiction of 50 words.
In Vine Leaves Press’s 50 Give or Take. August 23, 2021.
Cervical 4
Microfiction of 50 words based on a true story. Appeared in 50 Give or Take, Vine Leaves Press,
July 31, 2021.
things like this
My strange little piece about the complicated ambushes of regret appears in the April issue of Bright Flash Literary Review. Read “Things Like This” here. Make of it what you will.
“Already the creature was transforming itself in her memory. Turning malicious and feral. With sharp, pointy teeth and black, curling claws.”
from “Things Like This”
reception
My flash piece Reception can currently be found in the December issue of Boston Literary Magazine, a journal dedicated to poetry and fiction of fewer than 250 words. My piece just made the word count! You can find the magazine here.
obligate species
"Don’t take it personally, McAllister, but thirteen-year-olds don’t give a shit about puddles."
from “Obligate Species”
My short story “Obligate Species” can be found online in Fictive Dream. It’s dedicated to teachers everywhere, who labor on in an often thankless job. Read it here.
Man with a hoe
My short story Man with a Hoe was selected to appear in Crack the Spine XVIII, a print anthology of the best work from their digital site. You can purchase the anthology on Amazon here.
Man with a Hoe originally appeared in the May 29 issue of Crack the Spine Literary Magazine (crackthespine.com). Inspired by my own frequent sense of unease when visiting modern art museums and paired with the imaginary ending of someone else's relationship, it contemplates the subjectivity of both art and relationships. You can also read it here.
“We argue in an art museum while lesbians in bad suits and hipsters who take themselves too seriously nod at the exhibits around us.
”
Rubbernecking
The short story, Rubbernecking, appeared on December 29, 2017 in flashfictionmagazine.com. Loosely based on an actual event in my town, Rubbernecking is a fictional meditation on our innate curiosity about other people’s trauma and one narrator's questions about the impact of such events.
An earlier, unpublished version of this story was a Finalist for Shenandoah's 2008 Bevel Summers Prize for the Short Short Story under the title They Found Moby. Rubbernecking can be read here.
“But the thing I think about, the thing no one talks about, is what happened after they took Moby away...”
Past Highlights:
3:57 (Night Vision)
Grand Prize Winner of Writer's Digest's 7th Annual Short Short Story Competition
My very first short story, 3:57 (Night Vision) is about the emotional weight the simplest of gestures can carry in the face of marital breakdown.
3:57 (Night Vision) was originally published in Writer’s Digest, June 2007 and can be found archived here.
TWO SECONDS
Inspired by my work with sexually abused children (and by a large tree which actually fell across the road in front of me), my second flash fiction piece was chosen as a Top Ten Finalist in The Southeast Review's 2008 World’s Best Short Short Story Contest and was published in Vol 27, No. 1.