Author Description

BEST SMALL FICTIONS is the first-ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. Inaugurated with the 2015 edition, the series features the best microfiction, flash fiction, haibun stories, and prose poetry from around the world. From the 2023 introduction by guest editor Catherine McNamara: This is a vast menagerie of potent works, ranging from the complexities of fish bone ingestion to the murderous insouciance of mermaids. As a whole, there is a feeling that our world is suffering, our family bonds are constricted and rueful, we still long to satisfy/break from our parents; some of us have been uprooted or span the friction between cultures; women are at risk, in frequent danger, defenseless—until they collude and fight back. There is an arduous search for love and its sustenance, the flux of depression and the nearby presence of the dead, as well as an unexpected abundance of wolves. There is often an awareness of the rifts between our inner and outer realities, and our helplessness as we traverse between the two. In all, this is a bold, sumptuous array of contexts where I found true representations of realities that were dented, pulled out of shape, crystallizing, captivating.