I'd like to share my favourite flash fictions and short stories of 2023. Reading this year was like crossing a vast garden. I read a lot of stories, across dozens of magazines, but these caught on my hemline like glistening dewdrops and stayed with me.
I've picked three stories for three different categories: Literary Flash Fiction, Speculative Short Stories and Literary Short Stories plus a few bonus stories.
Literary Flash Fiction
The voice in this piece is riveting.
The Loss Adjustor by Mairead Robinson, Full House Literary, Summer 2023
"So, you have found me. Well then, quick, we have no time to lose. Put this on. Yes, it’s sheer, easily torn, be careful; it’s woven from dust motes, stitched with Sunday afternoons - those threads of interminable ennui. What’s it called? Oh, the cloak of normality. You can take it off when you’re alone."
Beasts Headed Home from the Party by Hannah Lackoff, Gordon Square Review
"We are young, we are wild, we are richer than we know. We are headed home from the party, together, for maybe the last time. Tena is not yet pregnant, Capuchin is still alive."
Riptide by Kathryn Aldridge Morris, Commended by Bath Flash Fiction, February 2022. A breathless interweaving of the real and surreal.
"When the nurse returns, he’s in a wetsuit, an oxygen tank strapped to his back, clipboard in his hands, says he’s a mental health nurse and you think ‘Sure!’ as the carapace of a sea turtle grows from his ribs and he shakes seaweed from your files and that thing you’re doing with your arms? you think it’s swimming but it’s the start of drowning and knowing the bottom of the seabed smells of hospital linoleum you try to catch hold of something to help you float..."
Read an interview with Kathryn on this story here: https://pentoprint.org/write-on-interviews-writer-kathryn-aldridge-morris/
From the Bath Flash Fiction Prize in 2023, I really enjoyed Train to the Last Iceberg by Autumn Bettinger.
"His tangled blond curls flutter in the breeze kicked up by train wheels. The zoo slides by, passing a giraffe licking metal poles and an elephant staring into the sun. She points towards the polar bear, a great white blotch on a barren scene. She taps her son’s shoulder, calls his name, but he keeps looking at the plants and people that chug by."
Highly Commended in October 2023.
Speculative Short Stories
The writing in this story is gorgeous from the first line, and the emotions run deep.
At the Lighthouse Out by the Othersea by Juliet Kemp, Uncanny Magazine, Issue 47, 2022
"Outside the big window, the Othersea danced.
Its swirling clouds piled about one another, forming and reforming, the bubbles that boiled out around them outlined in the glittering energy released in the collision of regular space and otherspace. I looked down at my hands against the dark warm earth of the food garden, and for a moment my skin glittered too, the green feathery carrot tops frothing around my fingers."
Bari and the Resurrection Flower by Hana Lee, Fantasy Magazine, August 2023
"The forest whispers of my sister’s arrival long before I sense her. Birds flutter between pink-girdled maehwa trees, mocking her voice in the tongue only shamans understand. Seonbyeon, Seonbyeon, they repeat mindlessly, and this is how I know my sister is looking for me."
Dreamforger by Donald S. Crankshaw, Dreamforge Magazine, 2020
“What do dwarves have to do with my dreams?”
“Some dwarves forge dreams,” I told her. “We make them out of moonlight and darkness, wind and cold, memory and emotion. It’s alchemy and magic and forgecraft.”
“And you think a dwarf made my dream?”
“If you’ve dreamed the same dream every night for a year, then it was dwarf-forged. No one else could make a dream that long-lasting.”
Although this one is a bit older, I read it at the beginning of 2023, and enjoyed the chilling winter atmosphere that KT Bryski conjures.
The Bone Stag Walks by KT Bryski, Lightspeed Magazine, 2020
"The Bone-Stag walks at midwinter, sharp-antlered, hard-hoofed. Deep white snow spreads under deep black sky. Cold air slices lungs; rivers stand as stone.
Over cresting drifts comes the Bone-Stag, leaving no mark of his passing. Down in the village, they draw their curtains fast against him. They bolt tight their doors. Garlic at the lintels and holly upon the sills."
Literary Short Stories
A fresh, unusual voice, spare and beautiful.
Perihelion by D. W. White, published in Tangled Locks
"At a thousand million miles the girl was eight and prone to singing. The air when they went out at night was the crisp, clean air of clear skies and stiff fingers, miles and miles of nothing but open cold. There were howling things hidden away behind the rolling ground, ground that went on in every way from the house, on towards the mountains hidden in the dark."
The Bone Pearl by Ke Shuan Chow, Honourable Mention, Alpine Fellowship 2022
"This is the way I remember my grandmother: knee-deep in water, skirts knotted around her waist. Her crow’s feet crinkling, white hair puffed out like dandelion fluff."
Her Teeth are Long and Full of Venom by Donna J. W. Munro. Electric Spec, Volume 17, Issue 4, November 30, 2022
This story stalks the thin line between literary and speculative fiction.
"Henry climbed the stairs to his second-floor office, completely aware of the monster that hovered behind him, breathing fetid breaths on his shoulders. He'd taken to wearing a hat because if he didn't, her drool would run off her needle teeth, onto his head, and into his eyes. Since her drool had some kind of venom in it, it burned his eyes something terrible when he didn't protect them.
He went through hats pretty quickly."
I'm including bios at the end to celebrate these writers and help to promote their work! Thank you to each one of you for the poignant and memorable stories you've gifted the world.
The Loss Adjustor:
Mairead Robinson is a writer and teacher living in the South West, UK. Her words can be found in Ellipsis Zine and Free Flash Fiction, and (very soon) in Popshot Quarterly and Crow and Cross Keys. She is currently working on a novel and can be found on Twitter @Judasspoon.
Beasts Headed Home from the Party: Couldn't find a bio for Hannah Lackoff
Riptide:
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is a flash fiction writer with work forthcoming or in Flash Frog, Bending Genres, Emerge, Janus Literary, Ellipsis Zine, The Phare and others. She has stories in seven anthologies, including And if that Mockingbird Don’t Sing. She lives in Bristol, UK, and tweets @kazbarwrites
Read an interview with Kathryn on this story here: https://pentoprint.org/write-on-interviews-writer-kathryn-aldridge-morris/
Train to the Last Iceberg:
Autumn Bettinger is a full-time mother of two living in Portland, Oregon. When not folding laundry or slinging snacks, she can be found writing in the wee hours of the morning before her kids wake up. Her work has been audio adapted for The No Sleep Podcast and has won the Silver Scribes Prize. Her stories can be found in The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts, On the Run, Numnum, and others.
All of Autumn’s published works can be found at autumnbettinger.com.
At the Lighthouse Out by the Othersea:
Juliet Kemp is a queer, non-binary writer who lives in London. Their fantasy series The Marek Series is available from Elsewhen Press; the first book, The Deep And Shining Dark was a Locus Recommended Read. Their short fiction has appeared in venues including Uncanny, Analog, and Cast of Wonders, and their story “Somewhere Else, Nowhere Else” in the anthology Portals (Zombies Need Brains) was shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award 2020. In their free time, they knit, go bouldering, and get over-enthusiastic about fountain pens. They can be found at http://julietkemp.com, or as @julietk on Twitter.
Bari and the Resurrection Flower:
Hana Lee is a biracial Korean American fantasy author. By day, she makes her living as a software engineer. She’s always loved the dark, the gothic, and the occult, so there’s usually a picturesque ruin of some kind lurking in the background of her novels. In her downtime, she enjoys knitting, crochet, TTRPGs, and video games. She lives in California with her partner and two fluffy cats. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Uncanny Magazine and Anomaly. Her debut novel, Road to Ruin, will be published by Saga Press in 2024. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @K_Hana_Lee.
Dreamforger:
Donald S. Crankshaw has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, which was more useful for writing fantasy than he had expected, though less helpful for writing science fiction than he had hoped. He has previously published stories in Nature: Futures, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Black Gate, among others.
Together with his wife and fellow writer, Kristin Janz, Donald publishes the online magazine Mysterion. While he lives at www.donaldscrankshaw.com online, he can be found in and around Boston in the waking world.
Read his interview here: https://dreamforge.mywebportal.app/dreamforge/stories/show/donald-crankshaw-dreamforger-interview
The Bone Stag Walks:
KT Bryski is a Canadian fantasy author. Their short fiction has appeared in many places, including Apex, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. They have been nominated for the Sunburst, Aurora, and Eugie Foster Memorial Award. When not writing, they enjoy craft beer and choral music.
Parihelion:
D. W. White writes consciousness-forward fiction and criticism. Currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he serves as Founding Editor of L’Esprit Literary Review and Fiction Editor for West Trade Review. His writing appears in 3:AM, The Florida Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Chicago Review of Books, among several others.
The Bone Pearl:
Keshe Chow is a Chinese-Australian writer and poet. Her work has featured in Hobart, Maudlin House, Okay Donkey Magazine, Rust + Moth, and others. She was the winner of the 2020 Perito Prize, the 2021 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction, the 2021 Yarra Literature Prize, and the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript. She lives in Australia with three humans, two cats, and far too many house plants.
Her Teeth are Long and Full of Venom:
Donna J. W. Munro’s pieces are published in Nothing’s Sacred Magazine IV and V, Corvid Queen, Hazard Yet Forward (2012), Enter the Apocalypse (2017), Beautiful Lies, Painful Truths II (2018), Terror Politico (2019), It Calls from the Forest (2020), Gray Sisters Vol 1 (2020), Pseudopod 752 (2021), Shakespeare Unleashed (2023) and others. Check out her novel, Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book 1. Contact her at https://www.donnajwmunro.com or @DonnaJWMunro on Twitter.
Do you have any favourite stories of 2023? I'm curious to hear what they are!