Sorry We're Prosed: My 22 favourite short stories of 2022
The fiction I read and loved this year
Hello again,
This newsletter is almost a year old, so I thought it would be nice to celebrate with a spotlight on some of the work I’ve liked this year.
I also wanted to spread a bit of appreciation into the world. When we’re focused on finding opportunities for our own work, it can be easy to forget how important it is to read what others are writing and to tell them if you enjoy it. Last year, James Everington put a story of mine on his list of favourite 2021 stories, and it gave me such a boost. I hope to put that same kind of positivity out there.
These stories are very much my own favourites, reflecting my personal taste. Perhaps you’ll prefer the speculative picks over the literary, or vice versa. Either way, I hope there’s something here for everyone, and that if any sound appealing to you, you’ll give them a read.
Most of these are pieces I’ve previously shared links to on Twitter, so if these leave you wanting more recommendations, follow me over there.
‘Self Care’ by Celia Brightwell: The Cardiff Review
A day in the life of a millennial office worker, this story just had so many funny and weirdly specific details that I couldn’t help but love it. It captures the seamless ways the brain moves between things happening online and in the real world, as well as the absurdist banality of the modern workplace.
‘Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise’ by Lauren Ring: Apparition Literary Magazine
A time-loop story in space. What makes this one for me is the characters, for whom you feel affection very quickly. It’s like intergalactic Palm Springs.
‘Stitch’ by Kelsey Norris: TriQuarterly
This story is a fabulous example of the kind of fiction that comes out of wondering what happens to people who are tangential characters in bigger stories. In this case, it’s about joggers who discover dead bodies. Norris imagines a support group for people who have had this unfortunate experience, and balances both humour and sadness in exploring the situation.
‘Pears’ by Phoebe Thomson: Short Fiction Journal
An art student struggles with the gap between art and life. I didn’t know where this one was going but was drawn in by its careful detail, and eventually satisfied and moved by the ending.
‘Goblin Market Auction Catalog’ by Katrina Smith: Uncharted Magazine
An innovative form, a seamless use of second person, and a goblin boyfriend, what more could you want?
‘The Forest has no immediate plans to kill you’ by Rex Burrows: Weird Horror
A foreboding set of directions. You won’t find many pieces as short on this list, and that’s largely because flash fiction is so easy to gulp down and move on from. But this one stuck with me — you’ll see why.
‘Persephone in Winter’ by Helen Salsbury: Fairlight Books
Now technically this one is from the very end of last year, but considering I didn’t do this list last year I think it’s fair game. This is a touching story about memory, set against the familiar (to me) backdrop of Portsmouth, on the south coast of England.
Black Kite and Wind by Erin Connal: VQR
This one has so many things I’m drawn to in fiction: suburbia, bored teens, a charismatic teacher, a group of people getting in over their heads. It’s all set at the turn of the millennium in Australia, with bushfires raging offstage. I just thought it was brilliant.
‘All Kinds’ by Hannah Kingsley-Ma: The Drift
A really funny, sweet piece that focuses on one character’s relationship with her best friend, and that friend’s baby. There’s a lot of good fiction out there about the ways babies introduce tension into female friendships, but I liked how this explored the more positive additional dimension a birth adds to the relationship.
‘The Souvenir’ by Nick Satnik: Literally Stories
It’s hard to say much about this one without spoiling. I’ll just say that, yeah, that’s how you land a good twist.
‘Office Hours’ by Ling Ma: The Atlantic
You probably don’t need me to tell you that Ling Ma, the award-winning author, is worth reading. But this story about an academic passing on a secret to a younger colleague so charmed me that I thought it was worth sharing.
‘The Fishwives’ by Andrew Kozma: Diet Milk
This short piece, in which a woman tries to ignore the pull of the sea and the mysterious “fishwives” is deliciously unsettling, and the setting reminded me of the hotel scenes in Phantom Thread. And a cheeky plug here: I have a story in the most recent print edition of Diet Milk, which you can buy here.
‘The No Sex Thing’ by Eleanor Kirk: Adda Stories
This Commonwealth Prize-shortlisted story is achingly precise in its depiction of frustrated desire between two university students. The little details of student life also really made this for me.
‘Rifle’ by Elle Nash: Nudes (404 Ink)
This was my favourite piece from Elle Nash’s short story collection, which was published in the UK this year. It’s a melancholy tale of on-off lovers, and the woman’s stasis in her hometown. You won’t find this one online, but the book is published by awesome indie 404 Ink, so it’s a worthy investment.
‘Box of Ghosts’ by Joy Baglio: The Bureau Dispatch
I love the strange and concise missives from The Bureau Dispatch, and I had already come across and liked Joy’s writing in The Fairytale Review so this was a guaranteed hit with me. The story is as small and well-made as the mysterious box that it’s about.
‘Annunciation’ by Lauren Groff: The New Yorker
Again, Groff hardly needs my endorsement. But the sweeping nature of the story is worth looking into if, like me, you have some ideas for short stories that are more like mini-novels, and need some idea of how to structure them. It has the richness of a longer work, with different characters and ideas, and multiple scenes.
‘Fever Girls’ by Linda Niehoff: Weird Horror
You really can’t go wrong with a story about a strange fad among teenage girls, in my view. Add in a fascination with death and a spooky wedding, and you have a winner.
‘Flamin’ Hot Cheetos’ by Vera Heidmann: House of Hash
This acute depiction of lockdown claustrophobia and paranoia, combined with a relationship overrunning its course, struck me as some of the best writing I’ve read so far about the early-pandemic experience.
‘An Account of the [War Heroines] of the First Independence War [By an Unnamed Soldier]’ by Isha Karki: Hotel
Every time I read an Isha Karki story, it makes me desperate to run off and try a new method of writing. She has so many brilliant ideas for bending the short story form, playing with sentences, or introducing new framing devices. In this story, the idea of a transcribed document with bits missing and illegible script gives the war story a genuine feel, while also making it more mysterious.
‘Haunted by Taylor Swift’ by Annabel White: Popshot Quarterly
I’ll happily admit that this one made the cut because I found it so relatable, being exactly the right age for Taylor Swift’s first three albums to have soundtracked my own teen and pre-teen angst.
‘The Fan Who Wasn’t There’ by William Shaw: Daily Science Fiction
What I like about this piece so much, other than its deft and subtle examination of fandom, is the effort put into creating a believable pretend TV show for the purposes of the story. It centres on fans of the imagined Granite and Gold, a part-Avengers (the 60s British show, not the superheroes), part-Doctor Who series, and the episode descriptions are so intriguing they make me wish it was real.
‘Children of God’ by Jessica Fisher: Mslexia
This ambitious piece of writing zooms in and out of the perspectives of multiple characters at a new-age church service. It’s print-only so you’d have to find it in issue 95.
That’s all for now. If you’re looking for places to send your writing, several of the opportunities highlighted in my last round-up are still open. I’ll be back in the new year with my next annual breakdown of my submissions. Until then, enjoy your holidays, and happy new year!
Sorry We're Prosed: My 22 favourite short stories of 2022
I've read a couple so far: good picks! You're way way way too young to know but the fictional Granite and Gold TV series in 'The Fan Who Wasn't There' is a direct reference to Sapphire and Steel, a late 1970s series from ATV (the Midlands ITV franchise) about two interdimensional operatives with special powers whose job is to protect the flow of time from outside interference. It starred David McCallum and Joanna Lumley (yes, that Joanna Lumley, fresh from her success in The New Avengers). Even the end of the final episode is the same, though a cafe is involved rather than a train. For some reason we never watched it in our household - maybe there was something better on "the other side" (BBC1) at the same time. It resurfaces occasionally somewhere in the depths of the Freeview channels.
These all sound absolutely fantastic! Can't wait to check some of them out later. Thanks for the recs :)