ONE STORY publishes one great short story at a time. We bring people together through reading, writing, and learning about short fiction.
In Nate Brown’s speculative short story “The Sea of Cortés,” a scientist who, with her partner, studies the migratory patterns of endangered humpback whales finds herself reassessing her life after a new pair of scientists arrives at their remote laboratory outpost.
In Devon Halliday’s “Nothing That Counts,” a man is confronted with the opportunity to turn the misfortune of the person he loves most in the world into an opportunity for personal gain.
The One Story Writing Circle is a year-long education program and accountability group. When you join the One Story Writing Circle, you join a small cohort of fiction writers looking to devote a year to improving their craft and process, and will receive access to selected One Story educational offerings.
Deadline Extended: Applications Due November 26
One Story makes a great gift for all of the readers in your life. They’ll get a great short story every month. You’ll get year-round gratitude.
Readers Love One Story
“At a time when literary writing seems like a dying art, when little magazines are folding left and right, when publishers bemoan the sinking bottom line, here lies a spot of hope…It is called One Story.” – The New York Times
Your support keeps words on the page and stories in the mail.
Alice McDermott hosts our final lecture of our 2024 Lecture series. In Is This as Good as You Can Make It? she’ll explore the topic of revision, and the endless pursuit of better sentences, scenes, characters, and stories.
Online Lecture
December 7
Learn tips and tricks for revision at your own pace in this self-guided class. Get five in-depth revision techniques to understand, deepen, and polish your work.
Self-Guided
For our One Teen Story contest, we ask writers ages 13-19 to enter their original, unpublished fiction. We are interested in great short stories of any genre about the teen experience—literary, fantasy, sci-fi, love stories, horror, etc.
Contest Open through December 2
One Story arrives in the mail each month like a letter from a friend. Whether you read all of the time, or want to read more, One Story fits into your pocket and into your life.
Six Months for $10.00
In this asynchronous class led by Editor in Chief Patrick Ryan, you’ll focus on how to develop your characters, how to deepen them, and how to use them to drive the story.
Asynchronous
December 5 – 10
In “The Things We Don’t Talk About,” one of the winners of our Teen Writing Contest, author Lily Scheckner explores how a strange and disturbing secret shapes the lives of two sisters and that of a boy who’s recently taken an interest in them.
You can now send a tax-advantaged stock gift in minutes. Reduce taxes on capital gains while deducting the fair market value of gifted stock held more than one year.
This class answers frequently asked questions about how to present your work to those on the other side of the submit button.
Self-Guided
Take a moment and scroll through our archives. You might be surprised by who you find there.
Submissions will remain open until we reach our cap of 2,000 for our fall reading period. We limit submissions to keep our reply time to authors down.
One Story provides a free, open-source submission management system to other publishers at no cost.
One Story is an independent literary organization. We are not supported by a large organization or single donor. Instead, we are crowd-funded. Last year One Story was supported by 632 individuals, 10 grant funding organizations, and thousands of subscribers. Thank you!
