Centaur Lit

05/29/2026

Congratulations again to the writers whose pieces from Centaur were selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2026!
"We Don't Meet in Buda," by Kelli Short Borges
"Yellow," by Christine H. Chen
"Circus," by Dawn Raffel
"At the Dentist's in Arlington Heights," by Tina S. Zhu

Please consider ordering the anthology, coming out soon! It is a wonderful annual celebration of flash fiction!

The Best Microfiction anthology series provides recognition for outstanding literary stories of 400 words or fewer.

05/29/2026

“Your skin is not your skin after a month—it’s all new skin. The air that pours out is not the same air from when we were younger, newly married, when we bought and inflated that mattress with his-and-hers sections to adjust for hardness. The hard one liked it soft, the soft one hard. Perhaps there are some molecules remaining of that air of the year 2000...”
From “Deflating Our Mattress after Twenty-Five Years” by Dolo Diaz
Read more at https://centaurlit.com/deflating-our-mattress-after-twenty-five-years-by-dolo-diaz/
Art by Ali McLafferty, “Carousel Centauress.”

05/14/2026

“I wish I could tell you I found your earring when you sent me back to the battlefield, but I can’t. I sincerely tried, but it’s so miniscule, a dot amidst ten square acres of smoldering fires, corpses, and nearly dead soldiers screaming in agony, so much blood soaked into the grass, it would be impossible to spot a single ruby the diameter of a pea.”
From “Post” by Michael Czyzniejewski
Read more at https://centaurlit.com/post-by-michael-czyzniejewski/
Art by Ali McLafferty, “Carousel Centauress.”

05/01/2026

The May issue is live at https://centaurlit.com/ with writing from Michael Czyzniejewski, Dolo Diaz, Gary Fincke, Sarah Freligh, Matt Kendrick, Jane O’Sullivan, and Donna Shanley, web design by Adam Robinson, and art by Ali McLafferty. Pictured: “Carousel Centauress”

04/22/2026

“Dogs whine at a burnt-out ambulance. Sometimes the children play games like ‘match this,’ it might be a bleached bone or a dead lizard or a shell casing, they line them up like soldiers on the sand, or they use a stick to bat scrunched up balls of newspaper—later, they’ll make a fire with the newspaper.”
From “Grizzly Bear” by Belinda Rowe
Read more at https://centaurlit.com/grizzly-bear-by-belinda-rowe/
Art by Andrea Damic, “Parallel.”

04/11/2026

Send something wonderfully strange and strangely wonderful to Centaur.

Submissions are open for the August issue. 400 words max. Read the guidelines and check out past issues.

https://centaurlit.com/submissions/

04/10/2026

“My husband helped me take care of Ceely and understood that she lived in a world of her own. He honored the faraway look in her eyes, a look I used to envy as her younger sister and a look as her guardian I learned to fear.”
From “Small Loved Things” by Pamela Painter
Read more at https://centaurlit.com/small-loved-things-by-pamela-painter/
Art by Andrea Damic, “Parallel.”

04/01/2026

“I couldn’t believe it could be this easy. Flip-flops left on the edge of the lake, and another pair by the porch. Their skin color pinked while mine browned, and it made me want to call my mom. How did I get here we’d say—how could we live in a country where we were so unknown to entire generations but loved fully by just one person?”
From “A Lake so Small They Named it Great Pond” by Leili Najmabadi
Read more at https://centaurlit.com/a-lake-so-small-they-named-it-great-pond-by-leili-najmabadi/
Art by Andrea Damic, “Parallel.”

02/03/2026

The winter 2026 issue of Centaur is live with writing by Mileva Anastasiadou, Edith-Nicole Cameron, Scott Garson, Marina Manoukian, Claudia Monpere, Leili Najmabadi, Pamela Painter, and Belinda Rowe, and with art by Andrea Damic.
Please read, enjoy, and share: https://centaurlit.com/

01/15/2026

“for the way she narrated stories of Krishna and Rama, for slow-chanting the Sanksrit shlokas so I could repeat after her, for soft-speaking to those inside the radio when I insisted we should say hello to them...”
From "I Want To Remember Ammai" by Sudha Subramanian

Read more at https://centaurlit.com/i-want-to-remember-ammai-by-sudha-subramanian/

Art by Nayoun Kim, www.nayounkim.com, “The Centaur.”