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. 

Notes on Design
Hung Liu

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
—Lord Byron

I paint from historical photographs. My subjects have been prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, laborers, and prisoners, among others. By washing these subjects in veils of dripping linseed oil, I both preserve and destroy the image. My style has been called a kind of weeping realism that embodies ideas like the erosion of memory and the passage of time. I try to summon the ghosts of history into the present.
     I was born in China in 1948, near the end of the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1968—at the age of twenty—I was sent to the countryside for proletarian reeducation during the Cultural Revolution. I worked as a peasant for four years, mostly growing wheat and corn. I remember one day looking up from the field and seeing an airplane high overhead, cutting silently through the sky. I wondered where it was . . .