We're delighted to announced our Pushcart Prize nominations:

Fiction:
“Cure Light Wounds,” by Joshua Shaw
“The Reader,” by Marcelle Heath

Memoir:
“Corpus,” by Robert James Russell
“Two Uncles: A Fairy Tale,” by Christina Dalcher

Poetry:
“Mountains,” by Laton Carter
“Letter to My Red Gun-Dog America,” by Hannah Craig

Wishing you all the best of luck!

Have you checked out our November issue yet? It's pretty dynamite. And it includes Ruth LeFaive's Best Small Fictions-nominated flash, "Clean Girls." She offers a few more words (and some great cats) to us here, with the single best word for these burning questions:

1)      What you're avoiding: pain

2)      What you're thankful for: health

3)      The first frost-covered morning: sugar

4)      Your sense of style: fleece

5)      Finishing a book: melancholy...

We are thrilled to announce our our Best Small Fictions nominees:

"Unnamed Notebook" - Nathaniel Lee Hansen
"Clean Girls" - Ruth LeFaive
"Remember That" - Shasta Grant
"Some Days I Wish I Could Be Frank" - Siobhan Welch

"Koosh Motel" - Meghan Phillips

Best of luck to Nathaniel, Ruth, Shasta, Siobhan, and Meghan!

We wanted to take a moment and reflect on the meaningful books, music, movies, and television that were created or that we experienced this year -- those moments of grace in a sometimes dark world.

Maureen Langloss, Flash Fiction Editor

I'm grateful for A Grace Paley Reader, edited by Kevin Bowen and Nora Paley (2017). I'd already read most of the stories in the collection, but the essays were new to me. So inspiring to learn that, in addition to being a trail-blazing woman writer, Paley was also a pas...

Our readers do so much work to keep Split Lip running, and we want you to get to know them! We've asked each of our poetry, fiction, and flash fiction readers what makes you say yes to a submission? Poetry reader Charnell Peters weighs in:

"I love poems that don't wait, poems with immediacy in the first few lines that drag the reader into the mess of a micro world. I also have a soft spot for poems that bend words into non-traditional forms and that offer rather than explain."

****

Charnell Peters is a...

Our November issue will make its debut to the world tomorrow (11/15). Now Playing offers a sneak peek at the issue's contributors, what they're playing, and how it makes them feel:

Caleb Michael Sarvis

I’ve been watching NBC’s The Good Place. My wife and I binged the first season on Netflix and now watch it every weekend when a new episode is up on Hulu. We’re big fans of Michael Schur (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and this has not let us down. It not only features a character...

1. The futon that serves as my writing space most days. Including the massive pillow I bought when I was living in a DC slum-lord owned low-rent housing apparatus that bears such beautiful memories.

2. My Macbook air, where things get typed, submitted, the formal gestures.

3. My current notebook covered in stickers from lit mags at AWP. 

4. The only pen I use to write, Uni-ball Vision Needle Rollerball Pens in 0.5mm Micro Point, black ink. Only black. I love black. 

5. An old book of poems b...

When I took over the Split Lip Twitter feed, I had no preconceived plan to make it a GIF-heavy space. I don’t typically use GIFs in my own social media accounts—in fact, I have very few friends who do. What can I say? I run with a wordy crowd. But when I started incorporating GIFs into the Split Lip feed, I noticed that those tweets seemed to be the most popular.

I decided to roll with it.

And the thing is, GIFs are wordy—or at least the process of finding good GIFs requires a special kind of vocabular...

The calendar might say November, but our October issue is still going strong. This week's Fightin' Words comes from featured memoir writer Kristie Robin Johnson. Be sure to read "Humanity at the Grovetown Nail Spa," and check out her single-word answers to our burning questions:

1)      What you're avoiding: Regret
2)      Your favorite Halloween        costume: Cleopatra
3)      Your superstition: None
4)      Your sense of style:...