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. 

Nothing, Darling, Only Darling, Darling
Elizabeth McCracken

“Who died and made you boss,” Sadie asked Jack, and he answered, “Nobody. Everybody. How do you make somebody boss when you’re dead, anyhow?”

Not everybody was dead, just a handful of significant people. Sadie’s parents; Jack’s sister Fiona; most recently, Jack’s nephew, blond Thomas of the passions, who’d gone to study piano in Poland and had stepped off a building at half past ten in the morning. He was twenty-seven.

It was Thomas’s death that convinced Sadie that she and Jack should finally marry. Without marriage, what was Thomas to her? She’d known him since childhood, a wiggling, insinuating, wonderful boy, a puppy, a darling; she’d known and loved him in every incarnation. As a small child, he liked to be tickled; as a teenager, he hated haircuts and wore his daffodil hair like a veil he intended to never lift; as a . . .