Submission deadline: September 5, 2026

Theme: Reflections

Prompt: What words shape us—and what do we choose to do with them?

For this issue, we invite writers to explore reflection as a force for growth, resilience, and transformation. At its heart, this theme is about the ideas we return to—the lines we carry with us—and how they guide us, challenge us, or call us to become something more.
 

Each submission must be anchored to a motivational or philosophical quote of the writer’s choosing. This quote should accompany your submission and serve as a point of origin for the story that follows.
 

Consider, for example, the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Simple, direct—and yet, when lived, anything but easy. Or the enduring call from Martin Luther King Jr.: “The time is always right to do what is right.” These are not just sentiments; they are challenges. Invitations to act, to reflect, and to grow.
 

At the same time, reflection does not always come from light alone. It can emerge from reckoning, consequence, and the weight of human action. Consider J. Robert Oppenheimer’s haunting words: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Stark and unsettling, yet ultimately a confrontation with responsibility—one that compels us to examine what we create, what we destroy, and what we must learn from both.
 

Your story should engage with its chosen quote in a way that is ultimately motivating or illuminating. That does not mean the narrative must be cheerful or uncomplicated—struggle, doubt, and even darkness have their place—but the work should, in some meaningful way, point toward insight, change, or human betterment.
 

We are not looking for simple illustrations of a quote. We are looking for stories that wrestle with it—that test its truth, reveal its cost, or uncover its deeper meaning through character, conflict, and consequence. Let the quote evolve over the course of the narrative. Let it gain weight.
 

Guidelines:

• Short fiction, up to 6,000 words

• Include the selected quote at the beginning of your submission

• The quote may come from any source (literature, philosophy, history, film, etc.)

• The connection between quote and story should be clear, but not necessarily literal

Above all, this issue seeks work that leaves the reader with something to carry forward—a sense that reflection is not passive, but powerful.

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In the end, ask yourself: Does your story simply echo the quote—or does it bring it to life?

Submission deadline: December 1, 2026

Theme: Neighbors

Prompt: We often think of neighbors as the people who live next door.

But proximity is a curious thing. We can share a fence with someone for decades and never truly know them. We can become unexpectedly close to someone on the other side of the world. We may find ourselves living beside people whose values, histories, dreams, or fears are vastly different from our own. Sometimes neighbors become family. Sometimes they become rivals. Sometimes they remain strangers separated by little more than a thin wall.

For this issue, we invite short fiction that explores what it means to live alongside one another.

Your neighbors may be literal, metaphorical, or entirely unexpected. They may live across the street, across the border, or across a plane of physical existence accessible to our world. They may be people, cultures, nations, species, memories, or even different versions of ourselves. What matters is the relationship created by nearness—chosen or otherwise.

Writers might approach this theme in many ways:

• Two neighbors whose lives quietly intertwine over the years.

• A feud that has lasted generations.

• Unexpected friendship between people with little in common.

• Communities divided by a fence, a river, or an invisible line.

• New arrivals learning what it means to belong.

• Neighbors who never meet but profoundly affect one another.

• Rival kingdoms sharing a fragile border.

• Apartment dwellers connected by overheard conversations.

• Creatures forced to coexist in unfamiliar territory.

These examples are merely starting points. Surprise us with your interpretation.

Whether your story is literary, speculative, historical, humorous, mysterious, or quietly reflective, we're interested in the tensions and connections that arise when lives exist side by side. The strongest stories will reveal how closeness can breed compassion, misunderstanding, conflict, love, resentment, curiosity, or unexpected grace.

As always, we value memorable characters, thoughtful craftsmanship, emotional authenticity, and stories that linger long after the final page. In a world that often asks us to choose sides, we're interested in what happens when people must simply learn to live beside one another.

After all, every story begins with someone standing just on the other side of the fence.