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Spotlighted selections have been made by guest judge Robert Shapard for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology.
We are thrilled to announce, on behalf of guest editor Robert Shapard, who selected the winning pieces, that the featured spotlighted stories for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology have been announced! These 10 stories will kick off the 2025 Best Small Fictions edition at the beginning of the anthology and will be discussed in an introduction by Shapard. Congrats to the spotlighted authors!
Best Small Fictions is the first-ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. Now in its tenth year of existence, Best Small Fictions features the best microfiction, flash fiction, haibun stories, and prose poetry from around the world.
- “Whale Fall” by Shauna Friesen | Gone Lawn
- “Swamp” by Catherine Niu | The Cincinnati Review
- “Teddy Bear Pancake” by Chris Scott | Weird Lit Magazine
- “This Thing in Our Chests” by Awo Twumwaah | Afreada
- “Finding the Water to Cry” by Jacqueline Goyette | Stanchion
- “Messiah” by Kate O’Grady | Fish Anthology 2024
- “No Ponyboy” by Faithna Geffrard | Susurrus
- “Sundays Are for Yard Work” by Kate Brody | Electric Literature
- “Pupurangi Shelley” by Robert Sullivan | Hopurangi — Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka
- “Heads” by Tina S. Zhu | Cease, Cows
Thanks to these authors for sharing their incredible work with us and for trusting us to share it with the rest of the world. Congratulations on the selections.
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