“Downpour.” Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Salvatore. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Jane Death Theory #13.” Copyright © 2020 by Rion Amilcar Scott. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Afterlives.” Copyright © 2020 by Bennett Sims. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Story and the Seed.” Copyright © 2020 by Amber Sparks. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Grimalkin.” Copyright © 2020 by Andrew F. Sullivan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Veins, Like a System.” Copyright © 2020 by Eshani Surya. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Blue Room.” Copyright © 2020 by Lena Valencia. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Unbeknownst.” Copyright © 2020 by Matthew Vollmer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Instrument of the Ancestors.” Copyright © 2020 by Troy L. Wiggins. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Pipeworks.” Copyright © 2020 by Chavisa Woods. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Family Dinner.” Copyright © 2020 by Michele Zimmerman. Reprinted by permission of the author.
About the Editors
© Adalena Kavanagh
LINCOLN MICHEL is the author of Upright Beasts, a collection of genre-bending stories from Coffee House Press. His work appears in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Granta, The Guardian, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. With Nadxieli Nieto, he is the editor of Tiny Crimes and Gigantic Worlds. He teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com.
© Tony Tulathimutte
NADXIELI NIETO is the editor of Tiny Crimes and Gigantic Worlds with Lincoln Michel, and Carteles Contra Una Guerra. She was formerly the managing editor of NOON annual and editor in chief of Salt Hill. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vice, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. Her collaborative artist books may be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum.
About the Contributors
SELENA GAMBRELL ANDERSON’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, The Georgia Review, Bomb, Callaloo, Fence, and Best American Short Stories 2020. She has received fellowships from the Kimbilio Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and recently won a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She lives in San Francisco with her family and is working on a novel.
J. S. BREUKELAAR is the author of the collection Collision: Stories and the novels Aletheia and American Monster. Her new novel, The Bridge, will be released in early 2021. You can find her fiction and nonfiction at Gamut, Lightspeed, Black Static, Juked, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at LitReactor.com and at the University of Sydney, in Australia, where she lives with her family.
KEVIN BROCKMEIER is the author of eight volumes of fiction and one memoir. His most recent book, from which “Parakeets” is taken, is The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.
CHASE BURKE is the author of the fiction chapbook Lecture, published as a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Series. Elsewhere, his stories appear in Glimmer Train, Salt Hill, and Sycamore Review, among other journals. Burke has an MFA from the University of Alabama, where he was the fiction editor of Black Warrior Review. He lives in Florida and is working on a collection of stories and a novel. You can find him at chaseburke.com.
AMRITA CHAKRABORTY is a Bangladeshi American writer. Her work has been published by Kajal Magazine, BOAAT, Split Lip Magazine, and The Tempest, among other publications. She is on the staff of Half Mystic journal, and was a winner of the 2018 Golden Shovel Poetry Prize. She is working on her first novel.
VAJRA CHANDRASEKERA is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His work has appeared in Analog, Clarkesworld, and Nightmare, among other publications. You can find him online at vajra.me.
WHITNEY COLLINS’s debut story collection, Big Bad, received the 2019 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2021. Collins is a 2020 Pushcart Prize winner (“The Entertainer”) and a 2020 Pushcart Prize Special Mention (“The Pupil”). Her fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, Grist, The Pinch, The Chattahoochee Review, Ninth Letter, and Southeast Review, among other publications. She lives in Kentucky.
JOSH COOK is the author of the novel An Exaggerated Murder, published by Melville House in March 2015. His fiction and other work has appeared in the Coe Review, Epicenter, Owen Wister Review, Barge, Plume Anthology of Poetry 2012 and 2013, and elsewhere. He was a finalist in the 2011 and 2012 Cupboard Pamphlet fiction contest. He is a bookseller with Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MEG ELISON is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her series, The Road to Nowhere, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. She was a James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award honoree in 2018. In 2020, she published her first collection, Big Girl, with PM Press and her first young adult novel, Find Layla, with Skyscape. Elison has been published in McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, and many other places. She is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.
BRIAN EVENSON has published over a dozen books of fiction, most recently Song for the Unraveling of the World. His novel Last Days was a 2010 ALA/RUSA-recommended book, and his novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award. His story collection The Wavering Knife won the International Horror Guild Award. A new collection, The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell, which includes this story, will appear in 2021. He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.
COREY FARRENKOPF lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. His fiction has been published in Redivider, Catapult, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Slush Pile Magazine, Third Point Press, Cotton Xenomorph, and elsewhere. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com
IVÁN PARRA GARCIA holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, where he was the editor in chief of Iowa Literaria. His stories and essays have been published in Spanish and English in Litro, Revista Leer, Suburbano, Al filo del Pensamiento, and Shahrazad Press. He is the author of Texarkana, a collection of short stories, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can find him at iparragarcia.com.
RACHEL HENG is the author of the novel Suicide Club, which won the Gladstone Library Writers in Residence Award 2020 and will be translated into ten languages worldwide. Heng’s short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and Prairie Schooner’s Jane Geske Award and has appeared in Glimmer Train, Guernica, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
THERESA HOTTEL was born in Taipei and raised in southern Oklahoma, and writes about ghosts, women, and landscape. Her fiction appears in No Tokens Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, and she has received support from Art Omi: Writers, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and Homestead National Monument, among other organizations. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is at work on her first novel.
SAMANTHA HUNT is the author of the short story collection The Dark Dark and three novels: Mr. Splitfoot, a ghost story; The Invention of Everything Else, about the life of inventor Nikola Tesla; and The Seas. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and a finalist for the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner. Hunt teaches at Pratt Institute.
PEDRO INIGUEZ lives in Eagle Rock, California, a quiet community in Northeast Los Angeles. Since childhood he has been fascinated with science fiction, horror, and comic books. His work can be found in various magazines and anthologies, including Space and Time Magazine, Crossed Genres, Dig Two Graves, Writers of Mystery and Imagination, Deserts of Fire, and Altered States II. His cyberpunk novel, Control Theory, was release
d in 2016. He can be found online at pedroiniguezauthor.com.
JAC JEMC teaches creative writing at the University of California San Diego. She is the author of five books of fiction, including The Grip of It and False Bingo.
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES is the author of sixteen and a half novels, six story collections, a couple of novellas, and a couple of one-shot comic books. Most recent works are Mapping the Interior and My Hero. Next are The Only Good Indians and Night of the Mannequins. Jones lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.
DAEHYUN KIM has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in South Korea, Hong Kong, New York, Miami, Paris, London, Bangkok, Singapore, Oslo, and Romania. He was trained in the traditional painting techniques of Korean Art and studied East Asian art history, graduating with a BFA in Oriental Painting from Hongik University.
LINDSAY KING-MILLER is the author of Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls. She lives in Denver with her partner and two children.
MONIQUE LABAN is a fiction writer and essayist based in New York. Her nonfiction has appeared in Electric Literature and Catapult. She is an alumna of the 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop, the 2019 Viable Paradise Workshop, and the 2017 Voices of Our Nation Arts (VONA) Workshop.
HILARY LEICHTER is the author of the novel Temporary. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, Bookforum, and Conjunctions. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
BEN LOORY is the author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day. His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, The Sewanee Review, and A Public Space, and on This American Life and Selected Shorts.
CANISIA LUBRIN is a St. Lucian Canadian writer, editor, critic, and teacher published and anthologized internationally, with translations of her work in Spanish, Italian, French, and German. Her poetry debut, Voodoo Hypothesis, was named a CBC Best Book and garnered multiple award nominations. The Dyzgraphxst is her second poetry book. “Cedar Grove Rose” is part of Code Noir, her in-progress short story collection. Lubrin holds an MFA from the University of Guelph.
JEI D. MARCADE is a Korean American speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in sub-Q, Uncanny Magazine, and Strange Horizons, among other publications. They can be found haunting jeidmarcade.com or tweeting sporadically at @JeiDMarcade.
HELEN McCLORY is the author of On the Edges of Vision, Mayhem & Death, and The Goldblum Variations. There is a moor and a cold sea in her heart.
SAM J. MILLER is the last in a long line of butchers. He is the Nebula Award–winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (Nebula finalist and winner of the hopefully-soon-to-be-renamed John W. Campbell Memorial Award). A graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, Miller lives in New York City.
ALANA MOHAMED is a writer and librarian from Queens, New York. She is currently working on a short story collection, as well as a collection of essays about running late to the proverbial party.
RICHIE NARVAEZ is the author of two novels, Hipster Death Rattle and Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, as well as two collections of short fiction, Roachkiller and Other Stories, which won the Spinetingler Award for Best Anthology/ Short Story Collection, and Noiryorican. He teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and lives in the Bronx.
KEVIN NGUYEN is the author of New Waves. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ALLANA C. NOYES is a literary translator from Reno, Nevada. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and was a Fulbright fellow in Mexico. In 2018, she was the winner of the World Literature Today Translation Prize in Poetry, and, in 2020, was selected for the emerging translator fellowship at the Banff Centre. Her translations have appeared in Asymptote, Lunch Ticket, Exchanges, Litro, and elsewhere.
SHELLY ORIA is the author of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0; the coauthor, with Alice Sola Kim, of the digital novella CLEAN; and the editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the Me Too Movement. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and elsewhere, has been translated into other languages, and has won a number of awards. Oria lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she has a private practice as a life and creativity coach.
LILLIAM RIVERA is the author of the young adult novels Dealing in Dreams, The Education of Margot Sanchez, and Never Look Back. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Elle, among other publications. Rivera lives in Los Ángeles.
JOSEPH SALVATORE is the author of To Assume a Pleasing Shape and the coauthor of Understanding English Grammar. He is the books editor at The Brooklyn Rail and has published work in The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Collagist, Dossier, Epiphany, New York Tyrant, Open City, Post Road, Salt Hill, Rain Taxi, Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture, and The Believer Logger. An associate professor at The New School, he founded their journal, LIT.
RION AMILCAR SCOTT is the author of the story collection The World Doesn’t Require You. His debut story collection, Insurrections, was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications.
BENNETT SIMS is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape and the collection White Dialogues. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Conjunctions, and Electric Literature, and his work has received the Bard Fiction Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He teaches fiction at the University of Iowa.
AMBER SPARKS is the author of The Unfinished World: And Other Stories and And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges, both from Liveright. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Cut, The Paris Review, and other publications.
ANDREW F. SULLIVAN is the author of the novel Waste and the short story collection All We Want Is Everything. His fiction has appeared in Hazlitt, The New Quarterly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other publications. Sullivan lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he works at an urban planning and design firm.
ESHANI SURYA is a writer based in Greenville, South Carolina. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming in Catapult, Paper Darts, Joyland, and Literary Hub, among other publications. She was the 2016 winner of the Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Flash Fiction from New Delta Review. Surya is also a Flash Fiction Reader at Split Lip Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Find her online at @__eshani.
LENA VALENCIA’s fiction has appeared in CRAFT, Joyland, The Masters Review, 7x7 LA, and elsewhere. She teaches at Catapult, the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and One Story, where she is also the managing editor. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and received her MFA in fiction from The New School.
MATTHEW VOLLMER is the author of Future Missionaries of America, Inscriptions for Headstones, Gateway to Paradise, and Permanent Exhibit. He teaches at Virginia Tech.
TROY L. WIGGINS is an award-winning writer and editor from Memphis, Tennessee. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Memphis Noir, Fireside Magazine, Memphis Flyer, PEN America, and on Tor.com. Wiggins formerly edited the World Fantasy Award–winning FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and is the 2019 Coger Memorial Hall of Fame inductee for his contributions to speculative fiction in Memphis.
CHAVISA WOODS is the author of four books, including the short fiction collection Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country and 100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism. Woods is a MacDowell Fellow and was the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award in 2018, the Acker Award in writing, the Cobalt Prize for fiction, and was a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for fiction. Her work has received praise from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The Stranger, The Seattle Review of Books, Booklist, Electric Literature, PopMatter
s, The Rumpus, The Library Journal, and many other publications.
MICHELE ZIMMERMAN is a queer writer with an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work appears in Lockjaw Magazine, Psychopomp, and other publications. Two of her short stories have been Top-25 Finalists for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and in 2018 she was a Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee. She lives with her partner and their two cats.
Index
ancestors 195, 240, 245
antique mirror 23
artificial leg 195, 199
banana 185
bathroom 74, 101, 177, 190, 207
- floor, curled on 113
- not used for sex 161
- of greasy yellow tiles 165
- with gauze and Merthiolate 84
man hiding in - 230
throwing up in - 103
beast
- who turns into a prince 25
five-headed - in heat 153
green - 88
hungry - 252
bird 9–10, 12, 19, 79–81, 84, 144, 173, 229
black - flying in circles 79
cloud of - 9
parakeet - 258
bone 20–21, 72, 107, 134, 149, 190, 192
bare -s protruding 189
- path 133
-colored Cape Cod house 73
-s creaking in protest 245
dry - 249
extra - in left heel 122
fingers as hard as - 91
Tiny Nightmares Page 16