Zoetrope: All-Story is a finalist for the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction, the highest honor due an American periodical, for the stories “The Grotesques” by Sarah Hall and “24, Alhaji Williams Street” by ’Pemi Aguda...
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.
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.
Lena Derwent had worked at Mason’s for less than a week when they started making fun of her.
“Well hi there, handsome,” they said when she was out of sight. “My name is Lena, and I come to you from the 1980s.”
“She looks like an art teacher,” said Gemma from sales. “Don’t you think? Kinda over the top? Kinda demented?”
And Joe from payroll laughed, as he often did when Gemma spoke, because he knew Gemma was unkind, but, but what if she were to come unfurled, be private, tender, alone with Joe—what then? So it embarrassed him to live on the same street as Lena Derwent, and to have recognized her as soon as he saw her at Mason’s, with her large, fuzzed hair; her slipped lipstick; her cleavage. She was the middle-aged woman in number twelve, who was out every Saturday weeding in her garden, who . . .
