Review of Spring 2021 Issue of American Short Fiction

​The Spring 2021 issue of American Short Fiction contains seven short stories from such writers as Anthony Veasna So to Whitney Collins. While this wasn’t a themed issue, I noticed that about half of the stories focused on the loss or vacuum of an absent father. It was interesting to see the way each character approached and processed loss differently.
 
Though, for me I think the best story was ‘How Soon Until We’re Deadly?’ by Kevin Moffett. It detailed the intervening moments after his father’s death, and the karate dojo he attended to fill that fatherly role. The voice of the story was vibrant, with moments of humor sprinkled in. The speaker, at the point of writing the story, had already been able to reflect and understand what happened, which gave a strong anchor for me to hold onto.
 
I didn’t particularly enjoy other stories in the issue. I felt that ‘Bitten’ by Holiday Reinhorn was too surface level and relied too much on pop culture. And ‘The Get-Go’ by Elizabeth McCracken had awkward sentences and didn’t bring anything fresh to the conversation of loss.
 
Final Rating: 3/5