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“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the
space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro, author of God in a Can and Ways to Read the World
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn’t know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the
space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro, author of God in a Can and Ways to Read the World
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn’t know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the
space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro, author of God in a Can and Ways to Read the World
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn’t know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“This collection of micro-stories teems with energy and talent. To pick this up and read it is to feel the pulse of our world: the heartbreak, the strangeness, the vast variety of voices and desires, the coming of the future. This is exactly what I want to read.”
Deb Olin Unferth
“I look forward to each year's Best Microfiction because it promises a view of life through a miniature, fractured lens. I'm enlivened by the odd shapes of these stories and the odd stories those shapes invite in, as if shopping in a Borgesian flea market. I'm reminded how the small, the quiet, tend to have the most interesting things to say.”
Grant Faulkner
“Amber Sparks’ introduction is a gauntlet thrown down as she cites inspiration and bravery as the defining attributes of the brilliant stories in Best Microfiction 2021. The pulse of these microfictions is operating at the speed of light, the fever a white heat of sound.”
Pamela Painter
“In only a few years, Best Microfiction has established itself as one of the most exciting anthologies of new fiction. If short stories are airplanes, the tiny miracles in this collection are hummingbirds.”
James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man’s Bluff and editor of Monkeybicycle
“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the
space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro, author of God in a Can and Ways to Read the World
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn’t know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“This collection of micro-stories teems with energy and talent. To pick this up and read it is to feel the pulse of our world: the heartbreak, the strangeness, the vast variety of voices and desires, the coming of the future. This is exactly what I want to read.”
Deb Olin Unferth
“I look forward to each year's Best Microfiction because it promises a view of life through a miniature, fractured lens. I'm enlivened by the odd shapes of these stories and the odd stories those shapes invite in, as if shopping in a Borgesian flea market. I'm reminded how the small, the quiet, tend to have the most interesting things to say.”
Grant Faulkner
“Amber Sparks’ introduction is a gauntlet thrown down as she cites inspiration and bravery as the defining attributes of the brilliant stories in Best Microfiction 2021. The pulse of these microfictions is operating at the speed of light, the fever a white heat of sound.”
Pamela Painter
“In only a few years, Best Microfiction has established itself as one of the most exciting anthologies of new fiction. If short stories are airplanes, the tiny miracles in this collection are hummingbirds.”
James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man’s Bluff and editor of Monkeybicycle
“One crucial thing that was missing in the world until recently? A single place to celebrate all of the wondrous and wonderful bigness of the tiniest of stories. Much gratitude for Best Microfiction.”
Grant Faulkner, executive director of National Novel Writing Month
“Short, sharp, funny, and sometimes dark. Penguins, too. The microfictions in Best Microfiction 2020 are compressed works of wondrous delight.”
Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice
“Reading these tiny, bright micro-fictions, I can’t help thinking of the scattered, chaotic molecules of coal, buried deep in black earth, compressed into diamonds, an effortless-seeming mine craft, like there’s nothing to it at all. Impossible not to marvel at these micro-fictions, such tiny bright suns as these.”
Lex Williford, author of Superman on the Roof
“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the
space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro, author of God in a Can and Ways to Read the World
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn’t know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“This collection of micro-stories teems with energy and talent. To pick this up and read it is to feel the pulse of our world: the heartbreak, the strangeness, the vast variety of voices and desires, the coming of the future. This is exactly what I want to read.”
Deb Olin Unferth
“I look forward to each year's Best Microfiction because it promises a view of life through a miniature, fractured lens. I'm enlivened by the odd shapes of these stories and the odd stories those shapes invite in, as if shopping in a Borgesian flea market. I'm reminded how the small, the quiet, tend to have the most interesting things to say.”
Grant Faulkner
“Amber Sparks’ introduction is a gauntlet thrown down as she cites inspiration and bravery as the defining attributes of the brilliant stories in Best Microfiction 2021. The pulse of these microfictions is operating at the speed of light, the fever a white heat of sound.”
Pamela Painter
“In only a few years, Best Microfiction has established itself as one of the most exciting anthologies of new fiction. If short stories are airplanes, the tiny miracles in this collection are hummingbirds.”
James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man’s Bluff and editor of Monkeybicycle
“One crucial thing that was missing in the world until recently? A single place to celebrate all of the wondrous and wonderful bigness of the tiniest of stories. Much gratitude for Best Microfiction.”
Grant Faulkner, executive director of National Novel Writing Month
“Short, sharp, funny, and sometimes dark. Penguins, too. The microfictions in Best Microfiction 2020 are compressed works of wondrous delight.”
Marcy Dermansky, author of Very Nice
“Reading these tiny, bright micro-fictions, I can’t help thinking of the scattered, chaotic molecules of coal, buried deep in black earth, compressed into diamonds, an effortless-seeming mine craft, like there’s nothing to it at all. Impossible not to marvel at these micro-fictions, such tiny bright suns as these.”
Lex Williford, author of Superman on the Roof
“Yes, this is how it is done. Beautiful, brooding, erotic, mysterious, idiosyncratic words shaped into thunderbolts, shocks that reveal what we didn't know we know. Words filled with promise, bewildering and enchanting us. This is flash at its best, flash now.”
Jane Ciabattari, columnist, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“A terrific collection of ultra-short stories—complex, thrilling, sometimes just crazy-nutball, in the best possible way! Huzzah!”
Frederick Barthelme
“These are small, arresting stories that cut right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that a story well told, no matter how small, expands beyond the space it inhabits.”
Robert Scotellaro
“A brilliant, moving, entertaining collection of very short stories, chosen by an editor who is himself a master storyteller. This promises to be a great series. Highly recommended.”
Robert Shapard, coeditor W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International
“These short short stories prove that length means nothing, that indeed possibilities expand in inverse proportion to word count. These fictions are travel guides, conversations, spell and incantations, language feasts, character studies, lab experiments. They are stories in the wildest sense of the word: stories that push and pull at boundaries, stories that move mountains and dig rivers and do it all while whispering quietly that they can.”
Amber Sparks
