Short Fiction Competition

Many thanks to all who entered the 2020 Short Fiction Competition. We appreciate the opportunity to read such bright and brilliant new work. From more than 2,200 submissions, guest judge Téa Obreht has announced results.

Spring 2021 Edition

The editors are thrilled to announce the release of the Spring 2021 Edition, designed by the acclaimed artist Jeffrey Gibson, with contributions from Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser, PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Tommy Orange, and 2020 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition-winner Deborah Forbes, among others.

Five Questions with Jeffrey Gibson

Why did you accept the invitation to design the Spring 2021 edition of All-Story?
It was an opportunity that I’ve not had previously, and I’m working on a book project for which I’ll be the editor. So I’ve been paying a lot of attention to print material lately, and I thought this would be a perfect chance to have some fun with the format of a publication. 

Plum Island
Uzma Aslam Khan

As a special online supplement to the Winter 2019/2020 issue, the editors present the prizewinning story from the 2019 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition, as judged by Tommy Orange.

Beach plums bloom in June and ripen in August. Yesterday, I found some in the sand and dropped them in a crooked blue bowl that my love, Ciaran, made when he was a child. This morning, in the kitchen, he slices one in half with a fillet knife. We each take a half and chew, waiting for the flavors to speak. “Salty,” he says at last, “in that other way.”

I think, in a multitude of tongues, Which other way?

Salty means “sexy” in Urdu, yet in a sense that does not translate into English. The word, numkeen, which sounds nothing like salty, is said only of a woman. It implies that he . . .