A Short Story Podcast of
Riveting Fiction and Wildly Creative Nonfiction
Definitely Not the Same Old Story.
Latest Episode
Caught
Jessica Barksdale
Caught is a story about a woman whose life has mostly occurred around her. She has watched things transpire, rather than acting to make them happen. But one day, something happens that upends her life and forces her to make changes and decisions.
Short story submissions are open until December 14th. Submit your story!
Recent Episodes
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The Peacock
Harrison Blackman
In “The Peacock,” a producer for the podcast “Detective Radio” travels to his hometown of San Diego to research an episode about the US Navy. Along the way, he confronts grief, reconnects with an old flame, and stumbles into a military conspiracy that threatens his life and all that he loves.
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Silver and Gold: A Hollywood Story
Jeff Fleischer
Dash Silver and Carol Gold were Hollywood stars in the 1950s, lovers on screen and off. Decades after their relationship ends, Carol receives an envelope with a surprising request from Dash – will she honor it or not? As she considers her options, she recalls their Tinseltown past and the surprising reason she’s had not...
A Cry in the Night
Natalie Sierra
In Hollywood in 1929, a young actress working as a telephone switchboard operator receives a terrifying call — a woman screaming for help, silenced by a sudden gunshot. When the police investigation leads nowhere, she jumps into action to try to learn the identity and the fate of the mysterious screaming woman.
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Driving the Section Line
Sarah K. Lenz
This touching memoir recalls a journey the author took with her father along the rural back roads of central Nebraska, visiting the significant landmarks of his life in what he called his “nostalgia tour.” He reflects on his life as a failed farmer, and she remembers flashes of alcohol-fueled abuse. But an unexpe...
Trash Can Blues
Jerry Vis
In the early-1950s, against his wishes, Jerry Vis’s father sent him to a strict Adventist boarding school in Virginia. In this humorous memoir, he recalls a school that was definitely not to his liking or fitting his character, where he was dubbed Jerry “Vice.” He remembers one particular Dean who doled out outland...
Hawkesmoor: A Novel of Vampire and Faerie
Anne Merino
British vampire Robin Dashwood has been hiding from his past in New York City. He’s poured himself into his work as a history professor at NYU. Since his painful transition into a vampire, he has avoided the place of his 18th-century human birth, Hawkesmoor Castle, in Yorkshire, England. However, a twist of fate returns ...
Rafael, Titicaca, and How My Son Got His Name
Roberto Loiederman
Some name their first child for a relative, some for a prominent person. Some choose a name that’s in vogue. Roberto Loiederman named his first child for an unforgettable cocaine dealer he met while crossing Lake Titicaca. This is a story of wanderlust, a passionate love affair, and the most unusual way Roberto’s so...
There is Something I Must Tell You
Michael Fallon
When Michael Fallon was diagnosed with stage four cancer of the throat, he burst into tears and wondered how he could possibly tell his wife the devastating news. This was followed by uncomprehending rage and radiation treatments in the belly of a massive, whirring machine that focused a beam of invisible light on his tumor...
Hideaway Lounge
William Torphy
This is the story of Margaret and Bernie’s long marriage, told through a series of nostalgic flashbacks to Hollywood of the 1950s. As they near the end of their long lives, the couple hatches a surprising plan, and one fateful night they return to the Sunset Inn, where they first met sixty years earlier.
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Bar Kafka
Francis Duffy
“Bar Kafka” is the gripping story of Joe Nickerson’s adventures after serving in Vietnam. We travel with him from Vietnam to Japan, and after he arrives home, from Los Angeles to New Jersey. Captivated by a stalwart, seductive, and enigmatic woman, he ultimately returns to Japan… which leads to a most une...
Sandhill Cranes
Anna Prawdzik Hull
Hector, a young man from Albuquerque, is one semester away from getting a degree from the University of New Mexico. His mother, who was recently deported from the U.S., is sick and needs urgent care in Oaxaca, Mexico. To help her, Hector gets a job working for a secretive character, a man named Johnny G, whose dangerous...
Summer of the River Bottom Dragon
Jennifer O’Neill Pickering
This eloquent and poignant short story, about redemption and forgiveness, begins when a horseshoe-shaped belt buckle tumbles out of an old photo album into Sarah’s lap. She recalls that there was nothing lucky about that particular keepsake, and relives the momentous events of one particular summer that ...
MacFarland’s Unreasonable Expectations
Sean Murray
What do a box-car riding, washed up sax player, a Tijuana cop, a Scandinavian diplomat, a gorgeous high diver, and a race horse ready for the glue factory, have in common? They all turn up in Sean Murray’s highly entertaining short story.
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Wine Tasting
Annilee Newton
Annilee Newton answered a Craigslist job post with a photo of herself drinking wine — a bold move that will eventually lead to her becoming a professional wine taster. This amusing memoir takes us along on Annilee’s journey to learn the intricate art of wine tasting. We travel with her to Mississippi, France, and Texas....
Bob and the Beatniks
Jerry Vis
In the mid-1950s, Jerry Vis attended a strict Adventist college near Washington, D.C. On the sly, his eccentric Uncle gave him this insightful advice as he departed for college: “To become your own person, learn how to think for yourself, not what others want you to think.” Jerry intuitively follows his Uncle’s...
I Have Her Memories Now
Carrie Grinstead
This is a short story about a medical miracle, a childhood obsession, and a first hearbreak. The main character develops a dark and destructive obsession with a classmate. She also experiences the first real dreams for her future, and her first crushing disappointment.
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Under Overhead Lights
Tim Jones
We all make choices, and then must live with the consequences. In this story, Chase reluctantly returns to the mid-sized, middle-class mid-western town he grew up in, and had left as quickly as he could. In a moment of nostalgia during a visit home, he tours the town and reconnects with two people he had nearly forgotten.The imp...
Everything I Need to Know I’m Still Learning from Mary Richards
Eileen Cunniffe
Both a memoir and a love letter to Mary Tyler Moore and her best-remembered role. This story begins with an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show where author Eileen Cunniffe’s real life mirrored Mary Richards’ television life, involving what might now be called “fake news.”
...Coming Soon
What’s Coming Up
Agustine’s Mother
FICTION | Lorena Ortiz
Teresa, a young woman living in rural Mexico in the 1930s, is pregnant for the first time and is bound to name her baby according to the tradition of the small town she has grown up in — a tradition that ensures prosperity or poverty for the child. This is the st...
Correcting for White People
ESSAY | Andrea Thornton Bolden
Race has been very much on everyone’s mind. This is a powerful essay written by a woman with a unique perspective. Andrea Thornton Bolden wrote in response to what we have seen on the news almost daily, and she coins a term that will definitely make you...
Finding the Lost River
MEMOIR | Michael Fallon
First, cancer endangered Michael Fallon’s life, and then it threatened to take his voice from him. He learns that to survive and recover from cancer, you must find that place in yourself which is the source of inspiration and strength, that deep river of being tha...
Tell O’Toole that O’Flaherty is Dead (A Christmas Story, of Sorts)
Jeff Fleischer Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, journalist and editor. His fiction has appeared in more than sixty publications including the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, the Saturday Evening Post, and So It Goes by the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. He is also...
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