Today we’re excited to announce our nominations for “The Best Small Fictions” prize.
For those who don’t know, The Best Small Fictions is an anthology series solely dedicated to curating the best short fiction published in a given calendar year. It features the best microfiction, flash fiction, haibun stories, and prose poetry from around the world. This year, the anthology will be a double issue including stories from both 2025 and 2026. This is in part because the facilitation of the contest and publication of the anthology is transitioning from Alternating Current Press to Black Lawrence Press.
It is for this reason that we’re including our nominations for both 2026 and 2027 in this announcement.
Earlier this year, we nominated the following five pieces that were published in 2025:
We also want to acknowledge author and contributor Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, whose flash fiction, Razia, Razia, was selected for the 2025 anthology. Huzzah!! Her piece was originally published online in Issue #15 ~ Spring 2024 and subsequently appeared in Issue #22, our “Best Of” edition available in print (from Ingram Spark for $25.99 or via Amazon for $30).
We are grateful for the opportunity to support and celebrate these fine folks and their pieces. Congratulations and best of luck!!
Dear Lit Mag Lovers and Pumpkin Spice Aficionados,
The weather has finally taken a turn, and we’ve officially skittered into Autumn. The nights are becoming longer and cooler, farmer’s markets are closing up shop, and visits to pumpkin patches and haunted houses are on the rise. A dramatic volta, indeed! So far this year, the turn has not been as dramatic as in years past, save for a few biblical-caliber rainfalls.
Regardless, autumn is always special for TGLR because we launched our very first issue in the fall. In 2020, to be exact. It’s a little surreal to think about the fact that we’ve been at this for six years, and headed into our 7th. And based on the bountiful issue we’re letting loose on the world today… Things are only getting better.
We usually don’t do this, but I’m a numbers nerd at heart and enjoy reflecting on the growth of the lit mag, so before I get to the meat of what this announcement is about, I’m gonna lay down some facts and figures.
In that first year, the submission call for the autumn issue was open for two months and yielded 180 submissions. For this issue, we had 940 in the same amount of time. That’s a 422% increase! Shazam!! But that jump did not happen in big leaps; it’s been steadily climbing with each passing season.
The only way we could handle the growth, keep our sanity, AND stay true to our word about having multiple people, including editors, review each precious piece of writing, was to invite more people to join the team. In 2020, there were 15 people who participated in that first issue. We now have 48 active members involved – 18 editors and 30 readers. And let me tell you, we could not have come this far without each and every person who has been, or is now, a part of the team.
It’s for this reason I’d personally like to express my gratitude to the entire team. Whether you were in it to win it that first year (looking at you, Annie Barker, Cat Dixon, MA Boswell, Stepha Vesper, & Ashley Espinoza), or jumped on board along the way, thank you! Your time and effort in considering each piece and your collaboration are extremely valuable and appreciated!!
Now… on to the big reveal! Yes, friends, today is the day. It’s always a thrill to introduce the authors and artists in each issue, but this one is especially sweet because at the top of the ticket, we’ve got new short fiction, Day Drinking, from Patrick Strickland. Patrick earned his MFA from the same program as many of our editors, at the University of Nebraska. But that’s not even the half. His story delivers gut punch after gut punch, and those final lines will linger, take root in your mind, and make you think about human connection in a world that becomes more absurd every day.
Possibly the only way to recover will be to dive into Pinky Tickseed by Rick Byrne. “Pinky” is a tender, poignant, and viscerally moving piece about a couple who have lost their daughter and are fighting (and failing) through their grief.
Next, we have a timely and expertly written piece by Jennifer Lee about a human with a robot that is more aware than it should be. Our new short fiction curator, Jessie Lovett, had this to say about the story: “I am really sick of reading about AI, but The Housekeeper was so effing good it transcended my personal boredom on this topic.”
Rounding out our short fiction quad, we are pleased to present A Million Girls by Eliza Sullivan. A story that is in a similar vein to Strickland’s Day Drinking, but from an entirely different perspective.
For something a little shorter, there are five pieces of flash fiction. We typically only publish 3 per issue, 4 at the most, but these are so good, we couldn’t resist… Ofrenda by Katie M. Zeigler, The End Will Be Televised by Tatum Schad, The Last Mealby Sarp Sozdinler, End of the Road by Sandy Krausnick, and Oh the Bishop Stood and Sat by Elliot Lakefield.
Short creative nonfiction includes two absolute standout pieces. Giants & Gryphons by NR Robinson caught quick yeses across the board from the team, with one editor commenting, “a compelling story, troubling but told with such clear-eyed self-compassion and understanding that we are taken into the narrator’s experience completely.” It’s also a little edgier than most of the short CNF we’ve published, which we love.
For stark contrast, and to lighten the mood, we give you I Am the Hotel Breakfast Buffet by Don Iannone. If you’ve ever stayed at a hotel that offered a free breakfast (and even if you haven’t) you might just recognize someone you know, or possibly yourself, in this essay.
This issue also features cover art by David Quady and select pieces by six other artists – Coriander Focus, Patrick Lysaght, Gabrielle Miller, Robb Kunz, Ann Calandro, & Jack Bord – cherry-picked from the hundreds of pieces sent to us via Submittable. Additional images were provided by contributor N.R. Robinson for his essay, and a number of other photographs were sourced from Unsplash. More about these artists can be found on the issue artwork page.
With that, we are delighted to release Issue #25 ~ Autumn 2026!
As always, thank you for visiting, reading, supporting independent journals, and believing in the arts!
Cheers to Leaf Peeping and Apple Picking,
~Shyla, MA, Annie, Toni, and The Good Life Review Team
Issue #25 Editors: Lea Pounds, Amy Crawford, Toni Allen, Annie Barker, Jill Veltkamp, Erin Challenor, M.A. Boswell, Ashley Espinoza, Tana Buoy, Patrick O’Dell, Stepha Vesper, Terry Belew, Cid Galicia, Cat Dixon, Michelle Pierce, and Shyla Shehan
Issue #25 Readers: Lavinia De Vito, Mitra Vajjala, John Cook, Tabitha Soper, Renee Gauthier, Lori Vermeulen, Miranda Moran, Judi Biniamow, Mike Lundy, Madeline Torbenson, May Bencosme, Elizabeth Jone, Cheyenne Williams, Michelle Ray, Claire Furjanic, Susan Loveland, Molly Zimmer, Bornil Murchhona, Maia Campbell, Madi Palmer, Sarah Chavera Edwards, Allison Weiler, Aida Eure-Chooran, Brooke Wiese, Ashley DeVrieze, Zach Vesper, Anna Stork, Evelyn Zhao, Diem Okoye, Olivia Burdash, and Brittany Jaekel.
Hello friends. We’re behind on announcing this year’s nominations, but not to worry, they were sent in well before the September 30th deadline (or perhaps just a smidge before). In any case, it’s never too late to celebrate!
For those who don’t know, Best of the Net is an annual contest operated by Sundress Publications that is designed to elevate a growing collection of writers and publishers who are opening the door to transformation through writing and art online. More about the contest can be found here.
If the cover art on that page looks familiar, it’s because it’s a piece of artwork we nominated last year, by Hiokit Lao. Amazing, right?!
This year we are pleased to nominate two creative nonfiction essays, two fiction stories, six poems, and three pieces of art published between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2026…
Introducing Issue #24 ~ Summer 2026: The Honeybee Prize Edition
July 14, 2026
Cover art by Agata Lis
Dear Friends and Readers,
Welcome to the beating heart of summer… Days when the heat lingers long into the evening, and the cicadas serenade the sun as it slides out of view. Today, we are beyond thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s HoneyBee Poetry Prize, Mara Lee Grayson, and with this exciting news, the release of Issue #24!
In case you don’t know, this is our 6th year running the HoneyBee Poetry Prize, and by now, we are not surprised to have received a record-breaking number of submissions (over 240). A little bit of math, and one can conclude that our team read through over 1200 poems to select the eight finalists included in this issue. Narrowing the field to the finalists who were sent to our esteemed judge, Marya Hornbacher, was extremely difficult, and also means that all of the pieces selected are truly the best of the best.
Unsurprisingly, this was a difficult decision – the poems selected as finalists were remarkable in both caliber and range. After repeated readings, considerable deliberation, and a good deal of sitting with each piece, I have selected “How to be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones” as the winner.
While its timeliness is undeniable – and brutal, and vital – the poem’s urgency and power derives as much from its linguistic and imagistic precision as from the subject matter. A palpable undercurrent of fury, desperation, and fear – not merely the speaker’s – is contained and given shape by the poet’s exacting syntactical design. Far from lessening its impact or cooling the poem’s fire, this deliberate restraint heightens the reader’s sense that the poem – like its subject – is barely contained, and may yet burn out of control.
This issue features Mara’s winning poem plus all finalists from this year’s contest, including:
Congratulations to all these fine folks for creating such wonderful work!!
Our list of contributors does not end there, though. This issue also features artwork by David Quady, Kirsten Clay, Ellen June Wright, Harrison Zeiberg, and Celine Lam, with cover art by Agata Lis. More about these artists is available on the Issue #24 Artwork page.
If this is your first visit to The Good Life Review, the 20th, or the 100th, we thank you. If you’re here to read a single poem that was written by someone you know or intend to read this latest release “cover to cover,” we thank you. And if you are just here for a taste of what we have to offer because you are considering sending us some writing or art, we thank you. No matter the reason, we are grateful and invite you to dive into Issue #24 ~ Summer 2026 and celebrate with us! We hope that you enjoy these pieces as much as we do!!
Cheers to Shade Trees and Honeybees, ~Shyla, M.A., Annie, Toni, and All of The Good Life Review Team
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Issue #24 Editors: Lea Pounds, Amy Crawford, Toni Allen, Ashley Espinoza, M.A. Boswell, Annie Barker, Jill Veltcamp, Erin Challenor, Patrick O’Dell, Tana Buoy, Cid Galicia, Terry Belew, Stepha Vesper, Michelle Pierce Battle, and Shyla Shehan
Issue #24 Readers: Madeline Torbenson, Tabitha Soper, John Cook, Mitra Vajjala, Michael Lundy, Miranda Jansen, Lori Vermeulen, Julie Johanning, Michelle Ray, Susan Loveland, Christine Nessler, Madi Palmer, Allison Weiler, Aida Eure-Chooran, Brooke Wiese, Judi B, Zach Vesper, and Jamie Wendt. .
Hello friends! Happy almost-summer! Today, we’re pleased to report that the team has completed combing through the 1200 poems received for the 2026 Honeybee Poetry Prize and cherry-picked eight finalists. Poems from the following people have been sent to the fabulous MARYA HORNBACHER, who will select this year’s winner. ↓↓↓
Farmworker Dies Fleeing an Immigration Raid in Southern California by Karla Hernandez Torrijos Section 01 – Tree Removal by Sam Aureli Hunting Season by Jamie L. Smith at the immigration office by Cianga Mwamba Love Letter on Lombard Street by Audrey Lane How to Be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones by Mara Lee Grayson The Sun and the Prison by John Dennis No Certificate by Todd Epp
Stay tuned to learn the results coming soooooon!
If you missed sending work for the prize this year (or even if you didn’t), there’s an opportunity to be published in our Autumn issue just around the bend. Why not give us a go? ↓↓↓
As a reminder, we nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and the Pen/Dau Short Story Prize. And… We’re a paying market! ($60 per piece published in the seasonal issue, $25 per piece published in Micro Monday, and $25 for cover art).
Your work will be handled with care and read by at least two (typically three or more) members of our editorial team, including at least one editor.
Discover all the magic TGLR’s Spring 2026 Issue Has to Offer
April 11, 2026
Dear Lit Mag Enthusiasts and Tulip Festival Afficionados,
Welcome to spring and the latest edition of TGLR. Yes, friends, today is the day… The big reveal of Issue #23!! Winter here in Nebraska was uncharacteristically warm and mostly void of snow, but the return of spring has brought the rain and with it, a refreshing drenching of new work by talented writers and artists we matched with via our reading platform. We love all these pieces, and think you will too!!
Of course, the issue would not be complete without artwork. The cover of the issue is a photograph by Siying (Rella) Wang, and the writing is complemented with pieces by Cynthia Yatchman, David Capps, Antonio Garcia III, Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, and Ayush Pradhan. More about each artist and their work is available on the Issue 23 Art page.
With that, we are delighted to release Issue #23 ~ Spring 2026 for your reading and viewing pleasure.
As always, thank you for supporting independent journals and believing in the arts!
Cheers to Slow Sunrises and Birdsong, ~Shyla and The Good Life Review Team
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Issue #23 Editorial Team: M.A. Boswell, Ashley Espinoza, Tana Buoy, Patrick O’Dell, Carina Faz, Amy Crawford, Lea Pounds, Annie Barker, Erin Challenor, Jill Veltkamp, Cid Galicia, Terry Belew, Michelle Pierce Battle, Cat Dixon, Stepha Vesper, Tacheny Perry, and Shyla Shehan
Issue #23 Readers: Jamie Wendt, Toni Allen, Zach Vesper, Julie Johanning, Brittany Turek, Miranda Jansen, Madeline Torbenson, Mitra Vajjala, Julia Sample, Ashley DeVrieze, Christine Nessler, Allison Weiler, Aida Eure-Chooran, Susan Loveland, and interns Madi Palmer and Cody Murphy.
Guidelines are available on our submission page and the form to send work is available on Submittable (be sure to select the fee-free option, unless you want to give us moneys, which is OK too).
This opportunity will end on March 31st or when we reach 75 submissions, whichever comes first.
As a reminder, we nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Pen America Awards, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and… We are a paying market! ($60 per piece published in the seasonal issue, $25 per piece published in Micro Monday.
Your work will be handled with care and read by at least two (typically three or more) members of our editorial team.
Do you fall in love like you’re being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, with a woosh? Or silently, by pretending not to? TGLR wants to know…
Photo credit to Sahand Babali
February 26, 2026
When we said we wouldn’t pinky swear to post monthly, there was a reason. January was so ugh! Right??! And impossibly, it’s almost the end of February. We missed Valentine’s Day and all those feels. But being fashionably late is cool. All the hopeless romantics know that hearing “I love you” when it’s *almost* too late is so satisfying. (As evidenced by the frequent use in rom-coms in Hollywood.)
In all fairness, in our December newsletter, we also said we were gearing up to hibernate for the winter. Still, where do all the weeks go? But enough about romance and the calendar, we’ve got a LOT of exciting updates to share, starting with some BIG NEWS!…
Last week, PEN AMERICA announced the winners of the 2026 PEN/Robert J.Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and among them was Sara Maria Hasbun for “Tbilisi.”
The editors of the Pen/DAU Prize select 12 outstanding debut short stories published in a literary magazine, journal, or cultural website each year. The winners receive a $2,000 cash prize, and their work is published in Catapult’s annual anthology, Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize. Read their full announcement here.
The anthology is a collection of the best pieces from the past two years, plus bonus new work from Matt Mason, Jake Bienvenue, Frank Gaughan, and the Nebraska Writers Collective 2025 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize winner, Rebecca Oliver.
The issue also includes “Razia, Razia” by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, selected for “Best Small Fictions” in 2025 by Robert Shapard and Alternating Current Press, and the poem “How to Hear God While Making Thanksgiving Dinner” by Charlene Pierce which was a “Best of the Net” finalist. All of the pieces in this stellar collection are worth spending time with. Not to mention the art! So good!
The online version was released on January 8th, and the print version should be ready in early March. Just in time for AWP!
If you’re planning a trip to Baltimore for the conference this year, we’d be thrilled if you stopped by our table at the bookfair to say hello: T716. If you’ve ever walked the bookfair, you know it’s a sea of tables with lanyard-wearing writers surging and ebbing in the aisles. For those of us shackled to a table, it can get a little boring, so a friendly face or three would be amazing!
If you stop by and say “Doug sent me,” we’ll bestow a tiny token of gratitude that you’ll have no trouble slipping into your carry-on. Teaser… It’s not a book.
Other Hot News…
🐝 The illustrious MARYA HORNBACHER has agreed to be the judge of our 6th annual HoneyBee Poetry Prize!! 🐝
This year, the combined prize payout is $1000. The winner will receive $500, publication, and a jar of honey from a Midwest apiary. 🍯 Other select finalists will also be published, with an honorarium of $60 per piece. The submission fee is $18 (for 5 poems), and the deadline is April 20th. Info about Marya and more details about the prize are available on our contest page here.
💫 We’re on the hunt for our next favorite prose piece! 💫
TGLR is currently accepting fiction and creative nonfiction—short (up to 5000 words) and flash (up to 1000 words—for our Summer Issue. We’re also open for micro prose for our bi-weekly Micro Monday feature.
100% of the work we publish is unsolicited. Every single piece is selected from what we receive in Submittable. In addition, each story and poem that lands in our queue is given serious consideration and evaluated by at least three people from genre-specific editorial teams, including at least one editor.
Details, guidelines, and the submission forms for all opportunities are available on Submittable.
💫 Our commitment to be better in 2026.💫
As we ramp up for the next reading period, we will be implementing a few changes to our reading schedule to better serve the writing community we are working to support. This includes increasing the frequency of internal deadlines for quicker turnaround times on submissions and streamlining our editorial processes. More info on all that will be in the next newsletter and most certainly in our interview with Becky Tuch, coming later this year.
In closing, we’re going to drop a fab new micro fiction piece, “House Party” by Dory Rousos Moore, originally featured on The Buzz (while we were in hibernation)…
“I start on my second coat of Red Hot, the boldest color of nail polish I could find, carefully painting each nail. Aviva and I sit on our apartment balcony, our shiny legs long on the railing, hot air balloons in primary colors floating above us as everyone starts to arrive. When her new boyfriend’s black Grand Am swerves into our complex, she jumps up, her drink spilling over the edge. The way she falls in love is with a whoosh, like she’s being sucked into a vacuum, and the way I fall in love is by pretending not to.
Moments later, Raj crosses the parking lot from his apartment to ours with long strides, grinning up at the balloons and clouds drifting toward the horizon. With graduation next weekend…” Read the Rest
Thanks for Reading, We Love You!
As always, if you have a question, quandary, conundrum, or a burning desire to share what sound you associate with falling in love, hit the “comments” button below.
Otherwise, stay safe out there and enjoy whatever weird weather situation you’re currently experiencing.
We’re open for our Spring Issue, but the window is closing soon…
(Click to access the magic portal)
We are currently reading for Issue #23. We publish poetry, short fiction (up to 5000 words), flash fiction (up to 1000 words), short cnf , and flash cnf. We nominate for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, Best Micro Fictions, and Pen Short Story Award, AND pay $60 per piece published in the seasonal issue.
Guidelines are available on our submission page, and the form to submit is on Submittable. The fee is $3, and a fee-free option is available for those who need it (please email editors@thegoodlifereview). But don’t wait, the window closes in one week!
We also want you to know… 100% of the work we publish is unsolicited, and each piece that lands in our queue is handled with care, given serious consideration, and evaluated by two or more people from genre-specific editorial teams, including both editors and readers.
Welcome to Winter and the Best of our Best: A Stunning Collection of Poetry, Prose, and Artwork
January 8, 2026
“Impressions of Waking Cranes” by Kim McNealy Sosin
Dear Lit Mag Enthusiasts,
We’re excited to announce the release of Issue #22 ~Winter 2026. This issue is a “Best Of” Edition that features some of our prize-worthy pieces from the past two years, plus bonus new work from Matt Mason (Nebraska State Poet 2019-2024), Jake Bienvenue, Frank Gaughan, and the Nebraska Writers Collective 2025 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize winner, Rebecca Oliver! We’re honored to share and celebrate this bountiful collection of amazing work!!
