The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for August were:
Tug of War by Trish Fegan
Sticky Fingers by Alyson Floyd
Leo Season by Sarah Sorenson
The Cache We Carry by Paul D’Arcy
Inheritance by Atif Nawaz
Teaching the youngest how to drive by Robb Lanum
Abyss by Alyson Floyd
The winner of the August 2026 Story of the Month is…
Inheritance
A woman and child lose one another under fluorescent bulbs. Scouring aisles, the mother trumpets alarm. Alone. Halved. Cleaved by her sudden emptiness. The child curls to a fiddlehead in the cave of an endcap. He hears his mother’s voice, but he’s a fern and not a lost boy anymore.
Mureall Hebert lives near Seattle, WA. Her writing has appeared in trampset, Hobart, Citron Review, matchbook, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.mureallhebert.com and @mureallhebert.bsky.social
His mother-in-law wears PTSD like a crown. She regales anyone within earshot about leaving her government job after her coworkers were mean to her and collecting disability for years.
He never mentions it, but he has not set foot in Lower Manhattan in the twenty-five years since the towers fell.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has seen some things and carried a few burdens. Some weigh more than others. Find him at liammacwrites.com.
She couldn’t be angry with the brownies; they hadn’t known. This was simply what they did: tidying, mending, completing the tiny cap meant for a babe born in winter. They must’ve knitted by firelight, the hearth smoldering through the night, fueled by wood scraps from the forever empty cradle.
Mikaila Nalbantova is a speculative fiction writer with a focus on the epic, the folkloric, and the Classical. Her work has appeared on Apex Book Company and in Club Plum, Tension Literary, and others. You can find more of her work through linktr.ee/mikaila.nalbantova.
He kept dreaming about his leg. A shark in the surf; a sniper in Fallujah; drag racing in the desert. Always something different.
The room was private, but it was hard to sleep; hospitals are filled with ambient noise.
He hoped the oncologist would have good news in the morning.
Jeffrey Reeves is a former communications director living in Tennessee. He loves good books, good dogs, and good beer.
The story of the week for August 31 to September 4 is…
Visitation by Paul D’Arcy
In dark of night, when the village is quilted in sleep, constellations spin tales as they move overhead. Two hounds, taut bodies quivering, are keen to hunt; while fleeing sisters clutch hands or tug arms, frantic to escape impending harm. Slumbering folk are in another realm. Completely unaware.
Terri Yannetti is a Connecticut-based newspaper writer. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Star*Line, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and 3rd Wednesday.
It started with a nibble at the corner of the page. Testing the shape of each letter on her tongue, the nibble grew to a bite. First a New Yorker, then Tolstoy, and before she knew it, she’d devoured Britannica’s 32. One could say she’d developed an appetite for discovery.
Ashley Holloway writes from her kitchen in Calgary, AB.
I lie here in the white, staring at the ceiling
trying not to read too far into the lyrics of your music,
not to project my grief onto yours–
this is the curse of the detail-hungry mind,
that choosing a radio station
feels like another means of baring one’s soul.
Maria Cargille wrote this story.
He takes a personal day. Third Wednesday of every month.
Drives three hours each way. Gets forty minutes in a booth.
The man across from him has his hands, his eyes, his sense of humor.
Has fifteen years left on his sentence.
Has never explained why he did it.
Still.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.