Open Call for Best Small Fictions 2027 The 2027 issue of Best Small Fictions will be a 1.5-year issue representing the best flash fiction published in 2025 and the first half of 2026.  This is an open...

This event takes place Sunday, 9/27/2026 at 2 pm PST/5 pm ET.

“I am looking for a reason to fall in love with a story and send an acceptance.”

I noticed it first on Monday morning, wide awake at 4 a.m., right there in black and white on my phone app. 25 Across: Avian metaphor for a romantic couple (9 letters); 30 Across: Two of a kind (4 let...

COVER ART BY TREVOR CUNNINGTON   FICTION AND TREEBEARD SAID, “I MUST DO SOMETHING, I SUPPOSE” BY ERIN VACHON MELODY HAD TO WEAR THE WINGS BY MICHAEL PERSHAN BORDER ROAD BY LISA BEECH HARTZ WAT…

by Michael Czyzniejewski...I felt compelled to sit, peck at the keys, so many of them missing, yet just enough, the exact keys that I needed still there: Despite me never playing before, not a note, I...

I’ve tried for years to forget them, tried not to imagine how it was to step away from those fingers of fire into the cool air of a September morning. I used to dream I was one of them, on a window le...

He spoke an ancient language out of Siberia. Full of wide low skies and rolling grasslands, shawled men with staffs, and ponies grazing over distances. This is one of those stories where people magica...

Nearing the border, Celal peeks out of the hole. He’s sitting fetus-like in the back of the truck. A swirl of cool air seeps in and dissipates the steam creeping on his glasses like ivy. He can hear a...

While I took down the strings of green and red lights I’d looped around our young maple tree before Christmas, my wife Christine followed the boy who lived next door up and down the sidewalk as he rod...

by Emily Rinkema...The Mongols don’t notice me right away. I’m wearing sweatpants, wool socks, and a Dogs are My People hoodie, which I haven’t taken off since I checked in two days ago, alone.

by Kim Magowan WAITING TO CROSS THE STREET, Linda watches a man drive through the intersection, and for a fraction of a second thinks he is Gary. His shock of graying hair, the crane-like way he hu…

Emily RinkemaRusty was in no condition to be taxidermied, but it was too late.

COVER ART BY CHRISTOPHER GARLAND   FICTION The Sex Appeal of the Blues by Deirdre Danklin In the Wind by Christopher Lee Chilton Zachary by James Keith Smith Lost and Found by Katherine Plumho…

Sarah FrelighI used to catch him studying the map of his right hand, forefinger tracing a highway of veins coursing north from wrist to palm, peninsula of fingers jutting into the air.

By Michael Czyzniejewski You know if Florez makes it anywhere near that basement, we’ll have no choice but to enact the Figueroa Protocol, meaning you can kiss your career, let alone that promotion…

Interview by Michelle Ross MR: First, congratulations on Necronauts, Ryan! It’s a weird, wild ride of a book. The novel is composed of fragments, of flashes, if you will. I had the pleasure of publish...

There was a racket in the yard. Hammers of some sort and starlings fighting on the wire that ran across the alley. The neighbors were hammering things again. The sound waves kept breaching her hull of...

Obituary — Michael Czyzniejewski SO, ON THE FIRST DAY, KEITH gave his summer school...

I was brushing my teeth before work, and the fly was buzzing about my head much the way my cat buzzes about the sink when I brush my teeth before bed. I heard myself say, “Hey, Zazu.” I’ve mistaken my...

• The Moon City Short Fiction Award is for an original collection of short fiction, written originally in English by a single or collaborative author. • Individual pieces in the collection may be publ...

• The Moon City Poetry Award is for an original collection of poems written in English by a single or collaborative author. • Individual poems in the collection may be published in periodicals or may ...

Cock’s Comb by Michael Czyzniejewski Locket by Michael Czyzniejewski  Romance by Michael Czyzniejewski  She Wants the Table on the Side of the Road by Wendy Elizabeth Wallace Homecoming by Amy Allen U...

COVER ART BY JANELLE PAULINO   FICTION GRIEF WORK, LLC BY KEITH WOODRUFF BELLY BY SUTTON STROTHER THE CENTAUR DANCES THE GIDDY-UP BUCK BY TRAVIS FLATT PET LOVER BY ANTHONY BROWN   NONFICT…

• The Moon City Short Fiction Award is for an original collection of short fiction, written originally in English by a single or collaborative author. • Individual pieces in the collection may be publ...

• The Moon City Poetry Award is for an original collection of poems written in English by a single or collaborative author. • Individual poems in the collection may be published in periodicals or may ...

Reviewed by Erin Vachon In the titular story to Kim Magowan’s The Last Day [Moon City Press, March 2026], a narrator finds a High Voltage dahlia that looks like a crimson loofah. She texts her husband...

Elegies for an Age of Disenchantment: A Review of Joel Hans’s The Bedtime Emptying of Our World