• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY Magazine

art. literature. commentary.

art : literature : community

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Nonfiction
  • Translation
  • Culture
    • Commentary
    • Interviews
    • Reviews
  • Art
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Contests
    • Black Writers
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contributors
    • Archive
Home » Fiction » Page 2

Fiction

MAYDAY is interested in original and engaging literary short fiction. We are committed to featuring a diverse range of content and authors, including LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and international voices. We love innovative, strong writing that trusts the reader and is true to its author.

Popular authors we believe fit this vision include writers such as Carmen Machado, Jeanette Winterson, Maggie Nelson, Ocean Vuong, Yaa Gyasi, Ali Smith, Tommy Orange, Saeed Jones, Jhumpa Lahiri, Etgar Keret, Shelly Oria, Aimee Bender, Pedro Cabiya, China Miéville, and Olga Tokarczuk, among others.

A Painter’s Secret
by Matt Whelihan

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Matt Whelihan

I met Toad during a rough time. I mean, I wasn’t sick or addicted or anything. Nobody I knew had just died, and I wasn’t living on the streets. It was just that Jen wanted kids as fast as she could have them, and she was letting me know this as often as she could. […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: July 1, 2018

Recognition
by Ignacio Ortiz Monasterio

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Ignacio Ortiz Monasterio

[Editors’ Note: An embryonic version of this piece, titled “Me, the Other,” was originally published in Spanish in a small circulation magazine. The following translation is by Michael Parker-Stainback.] Finally, after years of anonymous toil, my talent has been publicly recognized. And no one—literally no one, except my cousin Vincent, Professor Thaddeus Lazarus and I—knows it. He—Vincent—turned […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: July 1, 2018

Fighting for His Brother
by Ignacio Ortiz Monasterio

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Ignacio Ortiz Monasterio

This is how it happened. It was early in the evening. William was home, practicing his piano, when his older brother Rhodias and his squadron comrades, seven of them, arrived. The moment he heard the door and recognized voices, he shut off, afraid, and hurried to the sofa. “Did I stop on time?” he asked […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: July 1, 2018

The Death of Z
by Thomas Jacobs

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Thomas Jacobs

The Nobel laureate Zoroaster Zigsari was gunned down outside a tapas restaurant on Calle Cava de San Miguel on the eve of his seventy-sixth birthday. There was no question who was responsible. He was one of the regime’s fiercest critics. He had become, he told me, inured to their constant threats of death. Twenty years […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: July 1, 2018

Time Space
by Eric Barnes

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Eric Barnes

“If a dollar was only ten cents,” our middle child, Carmen, says as she digs into her purse, “everything would be a lot cheaper.” I turn to her, ready to respond, to correct her mistaken notion. But then I pause, my mind suddenly locked up. Her mother squints, lips moving, she too attempting to work […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: July 1, 2018

Useful Things
by Brian Kamsoke

January 1, 2018 Contributed By: Brian Kamsoke

That was the summer three years after we bought the small modular home and I was unexpectedly laid off from Curly’s Plumbing, where I had worked as an apprentice the previous four years, the summer we discovered Sarah was pregnant with our first child. But this story is more about my neighbor Jim, who hung […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: January 1, 2018

Sgt. Lawson
by Liz Egan

January 1, 2018 Contributed By: Liz Egan

A marine steps on the metal plate of an IED. His legs fly in opposing directions through the air. He lands on the ground with a thud, blood and exposed bone where limbs used to be. Jess switches off the TV. It’s just a movie. Just a movie.   The days leading up to Cal’s […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: January 1, 2018

Mere Anarchy
by Malcolm Cumming

January 1, 2018 Contributed By: Malcolm Cumming

I came back to help during storm season. My father suggested it—less a suggestion than a thinly-veiled plea, really. I had a few minutes late one afternoon and we were chatting—text only; the ancient comm-links at the lake don’t support visuals. We usually just use audio—it skips, although not too badly—but for some reason we […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: January 1, 2018

Intimates
by Mollie Boutell

January 1, 2018 Contributed By: Mollie Boutell

There’s an underwear catalog on the boss’s desk; you notice it when you’re in his office filing invoices. Not Victoria’s Secret or anything. It’s not some pathetic substitute available for men too embarrassed to buy Hustler or even Playboy. In fact, there are no models in this catalog at all—it’s just underwear. Men’s and women’s. Boxers and panties. […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: January 1, 2018

Reunion
by Susan Lynn Solomon

October 1, 2016 Contributed By: Susan Lynn Solomon

I flew to Florida because Laura, my cousin, my best and only friend, insisted I had to. The family was gathering for her mother’s funeral. I didn’t want to go—trembled when I thought of the ghosts waiting at the cemetery. Ghosts of my past were better left interred. But Laura dug her heels into my […]

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: October 1, 2016

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to MAYDAY

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • Crave
    by Mateo Lara
  • Kiran Bhat in Conversation with Aruni Kashyap
  • Kiss
    by Cyril Wong
  • Bowl
    by Cyril Wong
  • The Lie You Buy: An Interview with Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
    by Sophia Kaufman
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Explore

  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Nonfiction
  • Translation
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Contests
  • Archive

Most Read

  • Moss, Savannah, Georgia What I Think About When I Visit Savannah, GA
    by Tralen Rhone
  • Untitled Painting Gender Neutral
    by Sarah Terez Rosenblum 
  • Beach Palmy Cool Uncle
    by Emmett Knowlton
  • Sam Cohen Sam Cohen Interviewed by Raki Kopernik: Queer Jewish Writers
  • 12 Steps Twelve Steps Ahead
    by Evan Lavender-Smith
  • Car Trunk STICK ME IN THE TRUNK AND DRIVE ME AROUND AND TALK TO ME
    by Kari Teicher

Footer


MAYDAY
is published by
New American Press

About


Mission
Masthead
Contributors
Archive

Business


Reprint Rights

Engage


Volunteer
Donate

Help


Contact Us
Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.