American Short Fiction

American Short Fiction is an internationally award-winning publisher of today's best contemporary short stories. Founded in 1991 by Laura Furman at the University of Texas at Austin in cooperation with the Texas Center for Writers and NPR’s “The Sound of Writing” broadcast, the magazine quickly gained a national reputation for exemplary fiction. In 2019, the organization won the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, with judges noting that, “[ASF] remains urgent and fresh, its purpose clear: to shake us awake and bring the peculiarity of existence into full focus.” In 2024, ASF was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction for the fourth time.
ASF has also won recognition for its work from The Sunday Times’ Short Story Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and AWP’s Small Press Publisher Award. Stories published by ASF are anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Non-Required Reading, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and elsewhere.

A digital subscription gives you access to the full archive of ASF's print issues, starting with the first issue in Spring 1991 through to our most recent issue.

Featuring new stories by Matthew Lawrence Garcia, Laura Grothaus, Joshua Henkin, John McManus, JoAnna Novak, Peter Orner, Lucy Tan, and Zahid Rafiq.

Cover Art by Kyle Ragsdale.