Best of the Net 2018  



2018 FINALISTS


FICTION

  • Michael Alessi's "The Flat" from Okay Donkey
  • Sarah Boudreau's "The Birdhunter" from Little Fiction | Big Truths
  • Alexa Brahme's "Something Like Drowning" from Pigeon Pages
  • Leesa Cross-Smith's "Little Doves" from The Offing
  • E.G. Cunningham's "Women and Children" from Fugue
  • Emily Devane's "The Word Swallower" from Ellipsis Zine
  • Angie Ellis's "Sequins" from Passages North
  • Annie Frazier's "All of Us Animals" from Longleaf Review
  • Ephiny Gale's "In the Beginning, All Our Hands are Cold" from Syntax & Salt Magazine
  • Megan Giddings's "A Husband Should Be Eaten and Not Heard" from Split Lip Magazine
  • Sara Kachelman's "The Rapist's Dog" from Your Impossible Voice
  • Maria Kuznetsova's "Light Year" from Kenyon Review
  • Joanna Lee's "Prawn Mee" from Cha
  • Raven Leilani's "How to Smile" from Pigeon Pages
  • L.L. Madrid's "Ephemeral Girls" from The Coil
  • Evan Marcey's "Borges' Aleph" from Duende
  • Jolene McIlwain's "Drumming" from The Cincinnati Review
  • Tochukwu Emmanuel Okafor's "Boy" from Smokelong Quarterly
  • Claire Oleson's "The After-Dog" from Bridge Eight Press
  • Dayna Patterson's "Contents" from Whale Road Review
  • Eleanor Pearson's "Mirror Images" from Syntax & Salt Magazine
  • Kristen Ploetz's "Lifecolor Indoor Latex Paints® – Whites and Reds" from jmww
  • Michelle Ross's "Why Science Lessons that Involve Potatoes Give Me Grief" from Threadcount Magazine
  • Grace Singh Smith's "Oshini" from The Tishman Review
  • Brandon Taylor's "Grace" from The Rumpus
  • Cathy Ulrich's "Wobble of Ostriches" from Blue Fifth Review

    NONFICTION

  • Ellen Adams's "Military Coup Matching Quiz" from Kenyon Review
  • Ruby Al-Qasem's "The Girls" from The Baltimore Review
  • Mary Margaret Alvarado's "On Memory with No Devices" from Cagibi
  • Krys Malcolm Belc's "Check My ID" from The Adroit Journal
  • Brian Broome's "God Don't Like Ugly" from Hippocampus Magazine
  • Harrison Fletcher's "Identity Theft" from JuxtaProse
  • Marcos Gonzalez's "Pedro Full of Grace" from Black Warrior Review
  • Lawrence Lenhart's "How to Talk Dlak Thooted-Therret" from Quarterly West Review
  • T.S. Mendola's "Rivers of Babylon: The Story of a Third-Trimester Abortion" from The Rumpus
  • Abby Minor's "Rooms" from Contrary Magazine
  • Carley Moore's "My Big Gay Essay" from Aster(ix) Journal
  • Celina Nader's "Little Things" from Anomaly
  • Artemis Spyridonidis's "Clash of the Titans" from Noble / Gas Qtrly
  • Sheryl St. Germain's "The Light of Who We Are" from Iron Horse Literary Review
  • Jessie van Eerden's "What I Want Your Voice to Do" from Blackbird

    POETRY

  • Destiny Birdsong's "To the Black Virgin Mary on a Steeple in Greensburg, PA" from Split This Rock
  • Mary Block's "I Want Some Land" from SWWIM
  • Kayleb Rae Candrilli's "Someday I'll Love Myself See-Through" from Radar Poetry
  • Sarah Carson's "Ode to the White Boy Who Takes Me to Williams Sonoma" from The Baltimore Review
  • Dorothy Chan's "Revenge of the Asian Woman" from The Boiler
  • Tiana Clark's "Tim" from Frontier Poetry
  • Hannah Cohen's "Superficial" from Cease, Cows
  • Sandy Coomer's "Calligraphy" from Mud Season Review
  • Qurat Dar's "Apples" from The /tƐmz/ Review
  • Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton's "Death is Not a Riddle" from Under a Warm Green Linden
  • Deirdre Fagan's "Outside In" from Nine Muses Poetry
  • Asha Futterman's "halloween in college" from Anomaly
  • Raquel Vasquez Gilliland's "The Tale of Called Magic" from Moonchild Magazine
  • Ximena Gómez's "Last Day (Último Día)” from Cagibi
  • torrin a. greathouse's "On Examination/Dereliction" from Duende
  • Hedy Habra's "Or Do Memories Go Through Our Children Like Thread Through a Needle?" from Peacock Journal
  • Samuel Hughes's "Landscape with Human Figures" from Rust + Moth
  • Christina Im's "Blank Theory" from Counterclock
  • Umang Kalra's "neon lights and other signs of modernity" from The Brown Orient
  • Steven Karl's "Untitled Blue #6" from Dream Pop Journal
  • Megan LeAnne's "Passing" from Screen Door Review
  • Sheila Maldonado's "temporary statement" from Aster(ix) Journal
  • Francisco Marquez's "My Father Takes Me to Baseball to Straighten Me Up" from Brooklyn Poets
  • Caits Meissner's "Loving the Enemy" from Split This Rock
  • Brandon Melendez's "American Boy Shares Death Metal with His Abuelo" from Lunch Ticket
  • Briana Naseer's "Autonomy" from Up the Staircase Quarterly
  • Alan C. Palaez's "sick in 'america'" from Vinyl
  • Vivian Faith Prescott's "White Reindeer's Skull in the Sky" from Sheila-Na-Gig online
  • Linette Reeman's "The Mirror in My University's Weight Room Speaks to Me, in Two Parts" from Tinderbox Poetry Journal
  • Rae Rival's "Tiempo Muerto" from Cha
  • Alison C. Rollins's "Public Domain" from TriQuarterly
  • Danez Smith's "fat one, with the switch" from The Fight & the Fiddle
  • Patricia Smith's "What Breath Gives Back #19" from The Fight & the Fiddle
  • Sharon Suzuki-Martinez's "Last Night in Antsville" from Okay Donkey
  • Ashley Underwood's "Whale Watch" from 3Elements Review
  • Joanna C. Valente's "The Afterlife is a Room Full of Windows You Are Trying to Avoid" from Cotton Xenomorph
  • Emily Vizzo's "in good conscience he was unable to recommend a panama canal of any kind" from Foundry
  • Bonnie Rae Walker's "What I Would Like to Do with Donald Trump" from Drunk Monkeys
  • Kami Westhoff's "Wake and Wonder" from Sweet Tree Review
  • Jenny Xie's "Visual Orders, Indwardly" from Kenyon Review


    ***