best short stories 2025

The Best The Best The Best

Announcement

OUR NOMINATIONS FOR 2026 BEST OF THE NET

AT THE MOMENT we’re strictly an on-line project, at least until we get our art printer fixed and begin cranking out print publications again. Which means the best location for nominating writing we’ve published is Best of the Net. SO: we nominated some of the work we’ve run, by some of the de facto if not de jure very best writers out there. You can read about which writers, and which writings– two stories and six poems– at an announcement at our underutilized News blog.

THE TWO STORIES: Both are excellent reads which stress our humanity– so necessary in this time of AI, of the diminishing value given to human needs and uniqueness.

THE SIX POEMS: All exhibit from their authors a way with words, with sound, yet are simultaneously visual. The poems project penumbras of meaning while capturing the vibe of NOW.

All eight nominees are well worth rereading.

End of Summer 2025

Pop Lit Fiction

LATE SUMMER! Post-Labor Day. A time of earlier sunsets, cooling nights, and poignant melancholy accompanying the end of summer’s carefree days. A time of change, wistfulness, memories.

Our new feature short story, “Big Lagoon” by Thomas Thonson is a tale about summer experiences and memories, of present merging with past– with persons from the past– an artistic blend of setting and personality, of experience that jumps out at you. With a hint of a surprise which calls into question our narrator, or at minimum, our opinion of him. Or a taste of another dimension. An example of what the fictional literary art can accomplish when all elements work harmoniously together.

A summer story. But is it the best short story of this 2025 summer? We think so!

Going out in that storm was the kind of idea only Marcel would’ve come up with. He was the daredevil, and I was his willing accomplice. He was also a talker––a voluminous, non-stop, wildly imaginative talker. His words could fill you with a sense of expectation, of worlds you hadn’t even dreamed of.

(ALSO stay up to date with everything happening at our Fast Pop Lit site, where everything happens fast, and will get faster.)

January 2025 Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

THE YEAR 2025 has begun with a bang– with assaults of nature both hot and cold, California windstorms propelling unprecedented fires in the land of tech moguls and gross inequalities, while the East Coast and Midwest endure waves of snow and frigid temperatures. As if the universe-or-God has said, “Enough!” to mankind’s wars, all-encompassing technological systems, and ever-growing insanity.

AMID THE MADNESS, we at New Pop Lit struggle on with efforts to introduce sane, human-designed literary art into the mix– which at the same time depicts, relevantly and truthfully, the world we live in. Along with reminders of our common humanity.

Which talented writer Shelby Raebeck does ably– more than ably– in our new featured story, “The Ghost of Camp Hero,” using multiple-viewpoint technique to give different perspectives on three young people trying to find themselves– and to find ways to communicate their needs, goals, confusions and frustrations. Well worth reading.

Next afternoon after school, not bothering to wait for Lance, I biked into the village of Montauk and took the town bus to East Hampton, walking the rest of the way to Freetown. I turned into the driveway and found Lance sitting on the porch, looking up at me like I was a total stranger. Like if I take you in to be with my sister fine, cause I took you, but on your own you better not even walk up my driveway. 

(Note: The NEw POp LIt human-generated novella The Loud Boys is now available in a paperback version, here.)