Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South

12/29/2025

🎉 Congratulations to Guest Poetry Editor Eliana Franklin, whose poem “The Bridge in Summer” is the winner of the 2025 Noel Callow Poetry Award and featured on The Academy of American Poets!

The Bridge in Summer by Eliana Franklin

12/14/2025

❄️ Welcome to Issue Thirteen, with a very special thank you to our Guest Poetry Editor, Eliana Franklin! ❄️

Featuring: Scott Craig, D Bedell, Savannah Bell, Barclay Ann Blankenship, Ed Brickell, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Laton Carter, David Cazden, Ann Chinnis, Andrea Figueroa-Irizarry, Greg Freed, Paige Gilchrist, Jan Elaine Harris, Maggie Rue Hess, Sharon Hoffmann, Karen Luke Jackson, Matthew Johnson, Richie Kurt, Madison Lazenby, Gregory Lobas, Diane Melby, Roberto Ontiveros, Annette Sisson, Noah Soltau, Betty Stanton, Alma Vargas, and Emilee Wigglesworth

View the latest issue here: susurrusthemagazine.com/issue-thirteen

📸: Scott Craig

12/12/2025

🎉Congratulations to this year's PEN America PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers Nominee: “A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrection” by Matthew Hand 🎉

12/12/2025

🎉Congratulations to this year's The Pushcart Prize nominees!🎉

Poetry:
“Over and Over” by Hiram Larew
“Dreams” by Azul

Fiction:
“Where the Work Gets Done” by Matthew Hand
“A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrection” by Matthew Hand

Nonfiction:
“Love in the Time of Dementia” by Cynthia Stock
“Metro, Metro” by Marshall Moore

12/10/2025

🎉Congratulations to our 2026 🦋 Monarch Q***r Literary Awards Nominations 🦋! Thank you to Fifth Wheel Press for this amazing opportunity to showcase the gorgeous work of our q***r authors and artists! 🌈

11/30/2025

⏰⏰⏰ TODAY'S THE FINAL DAY! Send us your submissions for our upcoming Winter 2025 issue by midnight (EST) tonight! ⏰⏰⏰

Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

11/19/2025

⏳ A little over a week remains! Submit today!

Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

11/07/2025

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Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

11/05/2025

"I had achieved a version of the erasure I was looking for: I was a skin color, a passport, a nationality. A lifelong inability to fit in ceases to matter in a place where you’re never going to fit in."

"Metro, Metro" by Marshall Moore

  Metro, Metroby Marshall Moore   1.When I moved up to DC from North Carolina back in the early ‘90s, I lived on campus at Gallaudet University for one semester. To catch the metro, you had to hike about twenty minutes to Union Station through the kind of neighborhood with an evening soundtrack ...

11/03/2025

"'We’re too old for all that,' Sharon insists. But the water makes her playful. We skip rocks and sing the songs she likes. Mariah Carey. Janet Jackson. That’s the way love goes."

"We Are Twelve" by L. Bellee Jones-Pierce

  We Are Twelveby L. Bellee Jones-Pierce   Smushed between the car door and Sharon, I count historic markers and sing with the radio, my hair whipping and tangling in the hot summer air. Mama tools down the Natchez Trace, looking for a creek and waterfall she saw on Look Around Mississippi. Magic ...

10/31/2025

"I keep the space around it still. Nothing will crush it. It will not be broken. It will be here, when they’re ready."

"Where the Work Gets Done" by Matthew Hand

  Where the Work Gets Doneby Matthew Hand   Morning is not announced here. It leaks. Light seeps in through the slats above the sink and catches on the grime that no one has the heart to scrub. It lays soft across the counters, tracing yesterday’s coffee rings like crop circles—evidence of a l...

10/29/2025

"The boy stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He wondered if he looked that way to everyone. It was hard to tell what people saw. Sometimes they just looked away."

"The Last Nickel" by D Bedell

  The Last Nickelby D Bedell   OneA clump of July flies rose from the Angel City Cafe screen door as Tom Stackwood opened it to let the boy go in first. Two or three flies made it inside where the counterman waited disapprovingly with flyswatter in reach. Tom followed the boy and let the screen do...