See the full list of winners here!

When did you start writing?

Pretty much from the moment I had the fine motor skills to grip a pencil and form letters. I started off in first grade writing elaborate fantasies in my journal about what my dog did when we left the house. As a kid, I’d write books to give as gifts to my cousins when we went to visit them over the summer. I wrote short stories and humor pieces for fun in high school, majored in English and Creative Writing in college, and got to work writing a collection of short stories after graduation. Basically, I never had a shot at doing anything else.

What do you like most about writing in the short short form?

Half of good writing is editing. How can you say what you mean—no more, no less? The constraints of the short short form force you to get to the point and sharpen your prose until it’s precise and deadly. Plus: everyone’s attention spans are so dilapidated these days, you’ve got a much better shot of a reader actually making it to the end of your story if it’s bite-sized.

Where did the inspiration for “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure” come from?

I was reflecting on a trip I’d taken to Vegas and just how surreal a place it is: the giddiness, the headiness, the buoyant feeling that something wonderful is about to happen at any moment—and also the griminess, the hollowness, the endless tease that never seems to come to fruition. I ended up exploring that double-edged feeling through the lens of a relationship between two people stuck in a toxic cyclical pattern with one another, a dynamic that keeps approaching what feels like love or connection or pleasure but never quite reaches it.

What did your drafting and revision processes look like for “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure?”

I got pretty much the entirety of the story down in one sitting during a writing session at a local cafe. (That’s another joy of the short short format: being able to hack up a full story in a moment of inspiration and then get straight to polishing it.) The version that won the award actually changed very little from that first draft—I made a few tweaks to tighten and clarify things after running it by my workshop group, but this one came out “fully formed, ready to run,” as Ada Limón put it. 

Do you have a history of entering writing competitions?

Absolutely—like any self-respecting writer, I’ve got an Excel sheet that’s a tribute to the dozens of “no’s,” “nice no’s,” and “shortlists” I’ve received over the years. This was my first real win!

What interested you in entering WD’s Short Short Competition?

I was flipping through the back of Poets and Writers Magazine looking for contests and submission calls that aligned with what I was working on (I’m currently revising a linked short story collection about a bunch of college misfits—think Overcompensating meets A Visit From the Goon Squad by way of Mary Gaitskill). I saw just how many outlets were looking for stories with low word counts (3,000 or less), whereas most of the stories in my collection are over 3K. So I set myself a challenge to write something shorter than my usual work so I could try submitting to some new places, and this story popped out at exactly 1,000 words—the word limit for WD’s Short Short Competition. It felt like fate so I submitted it, promptly forgot I’d done so, and was so incredibly shocked when I received the acceptance email, I was convinced it was a very elaborate phishing scam. 

What advice do you have for other writers out there?

Keep writing, even if it’s just scenes and fragments, because the more you do, the more random pages you’ll have to stumble back on weeks or months or years later and say, “Wait, I wrote that? That could be something…” Keep a journal; use it to keep track of interesting things you notice so you stay attuned to the world. (You will want to remember the jacaranda tree that exploded all over your car, the smell inside that dive bar you stumbled into, the precise color of the sky the day after it rained.) Form or join a workshop with other writers—share your writing with them even and especially when it’s scary; learn how to give good feedback in a way that’s honest, helpful, and kind; and learn how to receive feedback without spiraling, getting defensive, or losing touch with your own instincts. Also, remember that a creative process is as powerful, finicky, and irrepressible as an ocean wave; even if you’re in a creative “low tide,” trust the process and remember that high tide is always coming back around.

A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure

by Hanna Bahedry

Any minute now, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, around the corner, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, you’ll be turning the corner and the pleasure will bump right into you or the pleasure will be turning the corner and you’ll bump right into it; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide and send a tray of fluted champagne glasses flying; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide and send one or both of you into the hotel pool and you’ll both be sopping wet and everyone in their deck chairs will cheer; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide.

It’s Las Vegas, because of course it is. This is where the pleasure lives, but just around the corner always. Here is where the pleasure is circulating, but always away from you like a waiter on the casino floor. Here is where the hope lives, not just the hope but the absolute certainty that something magnificent is bound to happen, is right on the verge of happening, that all you need to do is close your eyes and stumble faithfully around the next blind corner to find it. The less you do, the better, actually. The magnificent thing is fated, it is on a course set straight for you, you are the Google Maps destination that the magnificent thing has plugged into the phone on its dashboard, and all you need to do is be here and wait for it to find you.

 Outside, it’s airless like a breath stolen straight from your chest. The heat and the diesel fumes combine in the city’s cocktail shaker like a drink no one wants, a drink left in a plastic-handled neon travel mug on the corner of an intersection wider than a pilgrimage. Under the sun, the asphalt cracks and the linoleum splinters and the paint peels like skin in long strips.

If outside is airless, then inside is all air, airheaded and heady, a balloon cresting a high ceiling like a tongue against a mouth’s roof, everything high high high, too high for gravity, too high for the earth to turn, too high for the clock to strike. Every watch stopped at 00:00, every pair of hands sky high and stuck there forever.

You don’t wear a watch. You wear black and not that much of it. You circle the casino floor like you are inevitable, and every flashing light, every winning shout, every tuneless slot machine jingle is for you. You wait at the bar. You are always waiting here, but that’s OK. Here you know that the pleasure is coming, that the magnificent thing is always already on its way to you. The bartender is making your drink, and then she is handing it to you.

When he arrives, he’s wearing black too: shoes, pants, shirt, jacket. No tie. He kisses you. He smells like the diesel cocktail from the streets outside. He has been working all day while you sat by the pool in the saline heat with a bright blue cocktail longer than your forearm. He takes a sip from your drink, takes your hand and presses it to his lips, to his heart, which you cannot see but which you assume is somewhere just under the black shirt, the chest hair, the silver chain.

He does not ask you how your day was, and you do not ask him how his day was. He asks you what you want to drink, and he orders two, and he looks into your eyes as if he loves you. It is the way he always looks at you, and it has always scared you because you do not know if what you are and what he is seeing are the same thing. When he looks at you like this, his eyes become bottomless, and you cannot tell where they lead.

He is smooth, so smooth, but underneath the smoothness, there is something spikey and ragged, something that sizzles like a live wire. When the smoothness wears away (which it always does), you know you will get burned. You are covered in these burns already, burns he kisses better once he’s done making them, covered enough to wonder if love is meant to require so much Neosporin. But for now, he is smooth, so smooth. His thumb is at home on your knee, and he is laughing when you laugh. You both have a second round and a third round, and when you get up, the room tilts on its axis like the whizzing eyes of a slot machine. His hand is at your elbow, your back, your waist, and the carpet is red and gold and everywhere.

He waits outside while you hack in the lobby bathroom, champagne and spit on the ends of your hair, which you wet clean in the sink. The mirror is huge, and you are inside of it, and you are gorgeous, even with your champagne and spit-wet ends, even and maybe especially with the hollow look in your eyes. When you are alone with yourself, the hollow thing inside your eyes you do not want to acknowledge gets louder and louder, and so you push back through the swinging door into the casino, which is always louder than your thoughts, the casino which always wins.

He is waiting there, and his eyes are sparkling with the bottomless thing that scares you. His arm is around your shoulder, guiding you through the lobby and into the elevator, where you watch both of your faces in the mirror on the ceiling. Sometimes you think you are always watching because you are waiting for what you are seeing to change into something that does not scare you. You watch for as long as you think it should take to change, and then you keep watching.

The hallway is long with many corners. An empty room service tray, there. You could order room service. You could do anything you want. That’s the whole point, that’s the whole point of coming here, all the infinite options for pleasure, all the infinite options. The door beeps red, then green.

You kiss standing up inside the room, near the door, away from the beds. He kisses your neck. You’re dizzy. You’re crying and you’re not sure why. He is kind, he is always kind when it happens, like a part in a script he knows how to play. Sometimes you wonder if you cry so you can get to the part where he is always kind. He’s running a bath, sitting on the white edge of the tub with one black sleeve rolled up, cuff wet like the ends of your hair. You know in the morning, he will be angry, that the bottomless tunnels in his eyes will close, and when you go to touch him, he will push you away like a punishment, but tonight he is kind. He undresses you and puts you in the tub and undresses himself and sits at the other end. You tell him you are sorry (which is true), and he tells you it’s OK (which isn’t). But he is tender with you now, and it is so easy to believe him.

When the water gets cold, he wraps you in a towel you wish was softer. You hold each other in the bathroom until your skin is sticky with dried soap. You always wish this part could last longer, but already his eyes are beginning to close in that way they do. In the morning, they will be all the way closed, and you will reach for him, and he will turn you away, so tonight you get under the covers and back your body up against his so you don’t have to watch it happen. Maybe it will be different this time when you wake. Maybe his eyes will be open, and when you look into them, you’ll see all the way down to the bottom, and what you see there will not scare you, and he will see you, and it will really be you. You think it should be possible. You think about it so often, sometimes you trick yourself into thinking it has already happened.

Any minute now, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, you and the pleasure will bump shoulders at the bar, will reach for the same gilded button at the elevator bay, will beeline for the same blackjack table, and put your hands on the same empty chair. Any minute now pleasure’s car will pull up alongside yours on the highway with the windows down, any minute there’ll be a knock on the hotel room door and pleasure will be on the other side of the peephole, any minute now the lever will pull and the lights will flash and pleasure will come pouring out like dirty change right into your ready open palms, any minute now you and the pleasure will collide.

The post Hanna Bahedry: 25th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Awards Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners:

1. “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure” by Hanna Bahedry

2. “Scratch” by Gordon B. McFarland

3. “Toward the Thermosphere” by JL Perling

4. “The Piano” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

5. “The Creation of Art” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

6. “Initiate” by Coby Kellogg

7. “The Way Back” by Eric Jacobs

8. “At the Lochshore” by Sarah Dollacker

9. “Revival Reatha” by Thomas Oakley

10. “The Western Reaches” by Caitlin A. Quinn

11. “Vivid Warm” by Richard Jespers

12. “Red Bird (or, Eleanor at the End)” by Juliana Delany

13. “Witness Marks” by J.M. Lake

14. “My Father the Telepath” by Sophia Hyland-Wolzak

15. “The Bobby Pin Box” by Carol Elizabeth Larson

16. “Nature’s Decision” by John Arthur Lee

17. “What Wasn’t There” by C. Piper

18. “Something for the Children” by Katie Wills Evans

19. “Side-Step” by Laura Guilbault

20. “Echoes of Silence” by Nicole Disney

21. “An Infinite Capacity” by Mark D. Mrozinski

22. “An Odd Number” by Coby Kellogg

23. “Open Secrets” by Tim Lynch

24. “Dinner Date” by Jenna  Merritt 

25. “Choices” by Minh-Tam Le

The post Announcing the Winners of the 25th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

What do you like most about writing in the short short form?

Short shorts can be so challenging to write. Sometimes I feel as though I’m creating a word puzzle; like I’m trying to touch all the bases with very few toes. I started writing shorts when my daughter was small and my life so overscheduled that larger writing projects were difficult to manage. I enjoy reading (and dissecting) short shorts, too. Taking a well-written story down to its elements is like figuring out how a magic trick is performed.

Where did the inspiration for “Fountain of Ruth” come from?

When I’m in the car alone, I like to drive in silence. Too much noise makes it hard for ideas to be heard. So, I was enjoying one of my silent drives when the first several sentences simply dropped into my head. It wasn’t just a vague idea for a story, but the actual start of it. I dictated those full sentences into my phone and kept driving. By the time I arrived home a few hours later, all the pieces were there. I just had to put them together—and then edit for months. I had more fun writing Fountain of Ruth than anything else. There was something a bit surreal about the process.

What did your drafting and revision processes look like for “Fountain of Ruth”?

Although writing the story itself didn’t take long, the editing and rewriting took much longer. Once the draft was together, I sent it to my writing group, my daughter, and a few writer friends. Their suggestions greatly strengthened the story. I went through every sentence repeatedly, to the point where I nearly had it memorized. I also read it out loud several times to catch repetitious words and other stumbles.

What interested you in entering WD’s Short Short Competition?

The WD competitions are so well-known and respected that winning or placing enables a writer to feel validated, which I badly needed at the time. Although I’ve been writing for years and even won first place in two previous WD competitions (short genre fiction in 2012 and 2008), I had stepped away from short fiction for several years and feared I had lost my chops.

But I had a lot more at stake with this contest than just the entry fee. I had made a dumb deal with myself.

Even though writing has always been my first love, life got between us over and over again. For many years, I worked a day job, a night job, and freelanced, all while also raising my daughter. Now that she’s grown, my husband and I moved into a 125-year-old warehouse we are trying to rehab ourselves, while still working our day jobs. It had become so hard to make time to write that I began to wonder if perhaps it was time to put writing dreams aside and focus only on our building project.

Over the winter, when it was too cold for much construction, I wrote several new short stories. I submitted those stories to six different contests and told myself even a 10^th level honorable mention would keep me in the writing game, but nothing at all would be my sign it was time to close my laptop.

When the rejections began to arrive, one after another, I found myself wishing I had sent out more stories or chosen less significant contests—or believed in myself enough to not need validation to continue doing something I love so much.

By February, I had been rejected by every contest but one. The biggest of all I had entered.

So, thank you, Writer’s Digest, for keeping me in the game.

What advice do you have for other writers out there?

Don’t make stupid deals with yourself.

See the list of winners here!

The post Karin Patton: 2024 Short Short Story Award Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners:

1. “The Fountain of Ruth” by Karin Patton

2. “Cotton” by Jasmine Griffin

3. “Sixteen, Summer” by Shannon Bowring

4. “Epilogue: The Story After the Story” by Jim Hunstein

5. “Unscratched” by NVMann

6. “Midrise” by Michele Ruby

7. “The Personality Writer” by Jenno Kane

8. “Ghosts of Winter” by Ronald McGuire

9. “Beyond the Fence” by Noreen Kilbride

10. “We Could Never Afford a Headstone” by Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal

11. “The Smell of Old Books” by David Osgood

12. “Twister” by Gary V Powell

13. “Last Writes” by William County

14. “Last Call” by Kate Adams

15. “Road To Nowhere” by Jennifer Braunfels

16. “A Crown of Azaleas” by Ramona Richards

17. “Hope Never Stops-at-All” by Tiffany Link

18. “The Last Migration” by Robyn Dabney

19. “The Thought of Remembering” by D’Spencer Luyao

20. “The Empress in the Front Yard” by Kristofer Schleicher

21. “A Numbers Game” by John Foley

22. “Dear” by Marilyn Hope

23. “Last Words of Ordinary Things: The Wristwatch” by L.C. Davis

24. “The Okie Dokie” by Rachel Childers

25. “Why Do They Call It Toilet Water?” by Amy DeFlavis 

The post Announcing the Winners of the 24th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Bluebird

By Emmett Knowlton

On his fifth birthday, his grandfather gives him a book about birds. He likes books and he likes birds and unlike his brother who is nine he does not like sports and he does not like climbing trees. Last summer when he was four he fell out of a tree and hurt himself so badly that he had to spend two nights in the hospital. But now he is five and after he blows out the candles his grandfather tells him to memorize the names of all the birds in the book because doing so will bring him good luck. He doesn’t know how to read but he loves his grandfather, so he promises him that he will.

One day after school he finds a dead bird in his front yard. It is fall and the sun has started setting early, casting long shadows across his lawn like the legs of an enormous spider. In the dusk he sees a flash of blue against a pile of yellow leaves and from his new book that his mother has been reading with him before bed he knows that this is an Eastern Bluebird. He crouches to examine it.

It’s lying on its side. Eyes closed, head tilted downward into its breast. It’s funny to him that a bird called a bluebird would have a belly that’s orange and white like a Creamsicle, but the incredible blue of its head and wings and back helps the bird’s name make sense to him. He’s never seen anything like it, this creature. So small and delicate. So blue.

He decides to bury it in the secret spot in his backyard, beyond the patio, next to the small crack in the fence that he and his brother use to spy on the two girls that live next door. He digs a small hole in the dirt and places the bluebird carefully at the bottom. After he fills the hole back up, he takes a stick and places it into the mound to remind himself never to step on this spot. Then he goes into his house and washes his hands.

His mother asks what he’s been doing.

I found a bluebird, he says. In the yard. It was dead and I buried it.

His brother is at the kitchen table working on multiplication tables. Gross, he says. You touched a dead bird.

Be nice, his mother says to his brother. To him she smiles and says, that was a very thoughtful thing that you did.

The next day after school the girls from next door come over and ask him if they can see the bluebird.

He asks how they know about it and they say his brother told them.

The younger of the girls is six. She has red hair and freckles and sucks her right thumb. She looks at him and takes her thumb from her mouth and says please can we see it.

Okay, he says.

He brings the girls to the corner of his backyard and does not show them the crack in the fence but does explain to them the purpose of the stick in the ground.

Smart, the younger sister says.

The older sister is ten. She kneels and begins digging with her hands until suddenly she’s holding the bird in her palm. It’s covered in dirt and looks smaller than he remembered and worse than before, but the blue of its body has not yet faded and for this he feels relieved.

Whoa, the younger sister says. It’s so pretty.

The older sister goes away and comes back holding a pair of scissors.

What are you doing with those? he asks.

Without responding she takes the scissors and in a sudden motion cuts off the bird’s left wing. He blinks repeatedly and watches it fall to the ground.

What are you doing? he says again. Why would you do that?

She ignores him and cuts off the other wing, then cuts off both the bird’s legs and each of its individual talons. She giggles as she does this, and when he looks at what’s left of the bluebird he feels sick to his stomach and worried that he might cry.

Why did you do that, he says again. Hearing his own voice out loud he realizes that it’s shaking. It did nothing to you and you ruined it. You ruined it.

It’s dead, dummy, she says. You can’t ruin something that’s already dead.

This sends a lump rising to the top of his throat, and an unexpected sensation emerges from deep within him that feels hot and itchy. Later he will understand that this is called rage. Later he will wonder if everything that happened next can be identified as the first real fulcrum of his life, the root somehow of all that went wrong, and he will wonder, too, how many things might have been different if his brother had never told the girls about the dead bird, or if his mother had never read to him from his bird book before bed, or if his grandfather had given him something different for his birthday. Or, if in dying light of that fall afternoon as he played by himself in his front yard, he had never spotted there among those dead and yellowing leaves that smallest flash of blue.

And then he will think to himself no, correlation does not imply causation.

What happens next is this: he walks to the older girl and pushes her as hard as he can. He pushes her with both hands and she stumbles backwards. Her eyes go wide with surprise and worry and only as she begins to fall does he become aware that she’s still holding the scissors. They’re in her hand, pointed back toward her. Next to him he hears the gasp of the girl’s younger sister. And then through the fence comes the familiar cry of their mother, announcing that it’s time for dinner.

–

Emmett Knowlton grew up in Montclair, N.J. He is a graduate of Amherst College and holds an MFA from the University of Montana. His short stories have appeared in The Masters Review and MAYDAY Magazine. He is at work on a novel.

See the winner’s list here.

The post Bluebird: Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners:

1. “Bluebird” by Emmett Knowlton

2. “Yemma” by Nathan Pettigrew

3. “To Harvest Lavender” by L.J. Longo

4. “Something Sad About Us” by Randolph Thomas

5. “Deluge” by Bowen Cromer

6. “The Gospa” by Christine Goold

7. “A Package in the Post” by Brian Jacobs

8. “The Desert is Waiting” by Meredith Blevins

9. “Uniformity of Carcass” by Gary V. Powell

10. “The Rotational Velocity of Living” by JL Lycette

11. “In the Basement” by Jan M. Flynn

12. “The Whispering” by William Myers

13. “A Brief History of the Marshall Islands Agreement” by Michael Romano

14. “The Passage” by Lisa Bristow

15. “Paper Dolls” by Ryan Smith

16. “The Exchange” by Jeanne Schieffer

17. “Word Games” by Debra Whittall

18. “Sea Trials” by BJ Condike

19. “The Neighbor” by Lauren Oertel

20. “Defend Us In Battle” by William Reinholt Bauer

21. “Have a Nice Day” by BV Lawson

22. “The Warden” by Giovanna Ferrigno

23. “The Kid With the Shovel” by Thomas Flynn

24. “Her” by Penelope Westbrook

25. “The Cat Lady” by Thomas Wilson 

Read the Grand Prize-winning short story here.

The post Announcing the Winners of the 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Hubbard is a recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She has also received fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, the Sacatar Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in Massachusetts and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Florida, Ladee Hubbard currently lives in New Orleans. Find her on Instagram.

In this post, Ladee discusses how each story stands alone and is also part of a whole in her new short story collection, The Last Suspicious Holdout, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Ladee Hubbard
Literary agent: Ayesha Pande
Book title: The Last Suspicious Holdout
Publisher: Amistad
Release date: March 8, 2022
Genre/category: Literary Fiction/ Short story collection
Previous titles: The Talented Ribkins, The Rib King
Elevator pitch for the book: The Last Suspicious Holdout is a story collection set in a single black community in gulf coast Florida. Spanning a period from 1992- 2007 and featuring characters that appear in multiple stories, the book as a whole chronicles a community’s transformation over time.

IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

What prompted you to write this book?

Ultimately the book is probably inspired by my deep love for the community in which I was raised and, as I got older, my increased appreciation of the unique challenges faced by many within that community during the time when I was growing up.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The first story in the collection was published in 2009. There is a story for each year that passes in the book and my original idea was to have stories that went from 1988 to 2007, but in part because the stories are all structured so differently, I realized that would have made the book too unwieldy—in terms of trying to shape the collection into a cohesive whole.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Publishing was pretty smooth. Also pretty fast, as my previous book was published in January 2021 (a little more than a year ago).

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

While the stories are interrelated, they are each very different—in terms of structure, content, and theme. While I began with a loose sense of an overarching narrative, I thought about each story as an independent piece. The writing of each one represented a unique process of discovery for me.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

A sense of the transformation of a community over time. An appreciation of some of the complex challenges that many people within that community faced during the specific time period covered by the book.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Keep writing! Keep believing in the unique value of your own voice and know that there is a reader out there who wants and needs to hear what you have to say.

Click to continue.

The post Ladee Hubbard: On Interconnecting Individual Stories appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners.

1. “The Night the Moon Cries” by JJ Lubinski

2. “Mocha” by Soo Yeon Hong

3. “Pedigree” by Suphil Lee Park

4. “A Name for Solace” by David Bender

5. “The Leavings” by Rebecca Rhoads

6. “On Patrol” by Lacey Bard

7. “The Cillín” by Karen Tinsley

8. “You Fit the Description” by A.M. Crane

9. “Night Fair” by Angelina St. Pierre

10. “Boxes” by Paul Canegaly

11. “Time to Go” by Laura Kemp

12. “The Space Between” by Kimberlee Ashby

13. “Leaving” by Bill VanPatten

14. “Reincarnation” by Jennifer Meade

15. “Occupational Hazards” by Elizabeth Holli Wood

16. “Coloring Between the Lines” by Talya Boerner

17. “Tremaux’s Algorithm” by Amy Joy

18. “Voyager” by Joe Thristino

19. “The Platoon Sergeant” by L. Burton Brender

20. “Rendezvous” by Joelle Vicari

21. “A Heap of Broken Images” by Kat Ellison

22. “No Greater Love” by BV Lawson

23. “A Time to Listen” by Calvin Clark

24. “Spot the Stations” by Pascha Sotolongo

25. “The Swimmer” by Trisha Andres

Read the Grand Prize-winning short story here.

The post Announcing the Winners of the 21st Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

The Night the Moon Cries

By JJ Lubinski

I shrug on my tattered jacket, just thick enough to block the bite from the wind as I step onto the cobbled stone outside my door, making sure I lock it tight behind me. I glance at the sky, but no moon greets me. No playful stars wink hello as I pass under them.

Nothing up there to watch over me tonight.

I stroll through my village, weaving throughout the stone and dirt paths connecting the houses. I keep one hand tucked deep within my pocket, fiddling with cubes of sugar, while the other dangles loosely against my side.

The first house I approach is my neighbor’s house, a block away. My house is a ways outside of the village, guarding it. I lift my hand and knock twice, pause, then thrice. A warning to those inside to turn their lights off and stay inside until the sun rises. The candles in the windows are smothered, one by one until the inside of the house is as dark as the sky above me.

It doesn’t take long for me to make my rounds, lights blinking out in my wake as if I am a bad omen. I don’t stop until the entire village is dark, the doors are locked, and my people are safe.

I sigh, trying in vain to smother the anxiety within me as if it is merely a tiny wick of flame. I flip up my hood and stalk toward the outskirts of my village, ignoring the growing flames of my anxiety, threatening to burn me alive from the inside.

I stop once I reach the tallest hill, about two miles from my village. My chest aches, my muscles threaten to collapse from the climb. You’d think I’d be used to this by now. The walk through the village, the climb, the responsibility.

A quick glance over my shoulder is enough to calm my nerves. The village is gone, hidden beneath the blanket of darkness. I lower myself to the ground, fold my legs beneath me, and wait.

A blink of light in the distance is all I need to know they’ve arrived. My ancestors called them Palun. I call them terrifying, yet, I’m drawn to them. I’m the moth and they are my light. They are pale, lanky creatures that only come out on the darkest of nights when the moon is gone. They have the same glow, same color as the moon. My father believed they are the moon’s tears, born out of grief and loneliness from being stuck in the sky for all of eternity.

My father had such an amazing imagination. He loved this responsibility, loved that he was able to get a glimpse of the Palun. For generations, my family had been deigned the protectors of the village. We are the only ones who are able to see the Palun, to interact with them. We keep a watchful eye on the sky, waiting for the moonless nights. The villagers trust us, treat us with kindness in exchange for their protection. I was trained for this the moment I could walk, accompanying my father throughout the village, up the hill.

Tonight’s my first night without him. I think of the moon’s tears and wonder if my own could turn into strange, yet beautiful creatures.

I hastily wipe at the wetness dripping down my cheeks with the back of my hand and force myself to focus on the task at hand. I watch the Palun as they crawl on all fours across the landscape, streaks of white stark against the night. I sweep my gaze over them, counting. There’s only five tonight. I pull the sugar cubes out of my pocket. I brought enough for each of the Palun to get four.

My father had given me many instructions over the years, but there were three rules he always stressed. First, you always bring plenty of sugar cubes with you. Second, never bring light with you. They hate light almost as much as they love sugar.

I inhale deeply then pull the sugar out of my pocket. As one, the Palun freeze. My heart thunders as I watch them all swivel toward me. From my training, I know I have 30 seconds to lay the cubes on the ground before they are on the hill.

I hear the rustling of grass beneath their elongated feet as the Palun charge toward me. I lay the cubes in groups of four, spaced out by several feet—just as my father showed me. As I take the few steps to place the next grouping, I look up.

My heart takes a nosedive into my stomach, and my skin breaks out into sweat colder than the night.

They are ascending the hill already. I can see the gaping holes of their eyes, darker than the sky. Their heads are thrice as long as a human’s and their mouths hold teeth sharper than the knives my mother used to skin deer. They crawl on all four limbs, faster than any animal born on Earth.

The third and final instruction my father always stressed was to never, and I repeat never, have sugar on your person when they approach.

I throw the next group of cubes down, tripping in my haste as I move to place the last grouping down. My chin bounces against the dirt and I can hear ragged breathing above me.

Something tickles my calf.

I stretch my arm out in front of me and flick my hand. I watch as the next grouping of sugar cubes bounce against the grass like dice. I roll on my side, away from the line of sugar cubes. I jump into a squat and force myself to look at them.

The Palun stand on their hind legs, their arms dragging against the ground, in a line before me. They each stand at a grouping of sugar cubes.

It is then I realize I still have four cubes in my hand.

The Palun without sugar steps forward and my breath shudders out of me. There’s a roaring in my ears and I can’t tell if it’s my mind playing my father’s warning on repeat or the beating of my heart.

It stops inches from me, hovering in front of my face.

Its breath is frigid against my skin, pushing stray hairs from my face. It tilts its head in a calculating movement and then looks at my side, where my father would have been. When it returns its gaze to mine, it sits back on its hind legs and bows its head.

The rest of the Palun follow suit.

At a chelonian pace, I place the sugar cubes in the small space between the Palun and myself.

I take a step back, then another.

I watch as the Palun closest to me unfurls its clawed hand. A small pin sits in its palm. My heart lurches in my chest. My father’s pin. I never saw a day where he didn’t wear that pin, fastened right above his heart. It’s my family’s insignia—a full moon with rose thorns curled around it like a serpent.

I snap my gaze to the Palun’s, uncaring of the fear its beady eyes instill within me.

My father was buried in that pin.

The Palun pushes its hand forward. I feel the gaze of the creatures behind it. I force my hand not to tremble as I reach out and wrap my fingers around the pin. The Palun takes a step back and crosses its long arms over its body. Then, it speaks.

“New guardian. We welcome your service, as we welcomed your father’s.”

Its voice is beautiful. It’s the sound of birds welcoming spring. Of water lapping against the shore. The sound of fires crackling in the hearth. It reminds me of all the good in the world.

I nod and mimic its movements, crossing my arms across my chest. I spin on my heel and walk back to the village with the full weight of this responsibility blanketing me like a cloak.

Pushing open the door to my home, I hesitate. I glance toward the tallest hill and see a faint glow. The Palun watching me as I watch them. I take that moment to fasten the pin to the thin fabric above my heart and whisper, “I, Maya Rosetha, swear to not only protect my village, but the Palun, as well. I am the new guardian.”

I watch as their glows vanish and I follow suit, disappearing into my home and beneath the covers of my bed, where sleep eventually claims me.

The post The Night the Moon Cries: Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

When returning to the Puerto Rican island Vieques after Hurricane Maria, Gregory Jeffers noticed not only the horrific destruction left by the storm; he also saw things around him starting to sprout back to life. The scenes were so inspiring that he wove the imagery into his short story, “Quitting Time.”

“A fourth horse limped into view and stood under a hurricane-bonsaied mango that once probably towered sixty feet. Its new leaves sprouted in bobs the size of beach balls,” he writes.

“Quitting Time” is a tale of destruction and rebirth set on Vieques after the hurricane. It explores the power of the natural world to cure itself and some human miseries, as well as shed light on larger existential questions. It won first place in the 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition.

Read Jeffers’ winning short story.

Jeffers’ winnings include $3,000 and a pass to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference.

Jeffers has been visiting the island for more than 30 years, so he is pretty familiar with the natural world there. He was originally brought to the island—and many other settings that have inspired his writing—by his work as a contractor for the construction industry. 

Another work setting that has inspired Jeffers to write stories is an old orphanage in Vermont. The four days he spent evaluating the building conjured up the sounds and smells of 1880, and along with it, inspiration for a novel he wrote about a person in a similar situation being visited by a young ghost from that time period. 

“It turns into a parallel storyline, the changes that occur in this man and the other tale of the young woman and her siblings as orphans in 1880. The two stories converge in a horrifically magical way,” he says. But, “it’s a very complicated piece and that’s why it’s still not published.” 

Jeffers turned to writing short stories when an editor he sent a draft of his novel to suggested that he try writing short stories to perfect his craft. He found that short fiction is a good practice in learning to honor readers’ time. His editing—whether for short stories or novel writing—focuses mostly on reduction.

He says the challenge of flash fiction is making a piece a story, not just presenting a situation that ends in a joke.

“It seems like a lot of flash fiction is a situation looking for a punchline,” Jeffers says. “To make a story whole, the story needs an arc and character. That’s difficult in a short work. The people that are best at it are the folks that have the ability to create the iceberg, with 10 percent of the story showing up and the other 90 percent below the water.”

To overcome the challenge of coming up with ideas for short stories, Jeffers keeps a list of every idea that comes to his mind. He jots many of these ideas onto notecards that he uses to generate story ideas. He categorizes these cards into three sets. The first is a list of settings.

“It can be anything as broad as the word prehistoric to something more specific like Sherwood Forest,” he says.

The second set of cards lists characters, and the third lists story genres. When he is ready to begin a story, Jeffers picks a card from each pile and puts them together. 

Jeffers admits that story endings are also hard for him to pin down. He tries to focus on two things that signal resolution: a change in character or circumstances, or a signal that change is within reach; and the rhythm of the sentences.

“It has more to do with syntax and how the words are put together and the length of sentences,” he says. “The best way to say it is that it’s a rhythmic quality to the ending. That can help signal the story has some kind of resolution.”

See the official 20th Annual Short Short Story Competition winner list.

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