Short Fiction and Poetry

When my father was stationed on that beautiful bay with its long, uninhabited peninsula, we lived in officer quarters [...]

I gave each line a fair start but finished only a few. After the first page, I was eager to sign so I quickly flipped to the second. [...]

Maybe it was the fact that it was day three out of five on her own with the kids — Richard was away on business again [...]

The old man was as lean as a tough winter, and yet he never got cold. He wore a hoodie and tatty fishing gloves in January. [...]

Red has three distinct memories of his mother. He remembers the first smile she gave him. His twin sister Dahlia says he’s making up the memory [...]

DarkWinter Press is thrilled to announce our latest release, Little River Bridge, the compelling debut novel by DorothyJane Kavanaugh!

I was equally relieved and annoyed that my father wasn’t home when we arrived. His cabin clung to a remote Vancouver Island riverbank [...]

Something brushes by and briefly blocks my line of sight as I peer through the keyhole in the dark oak door. [...]

DarkWinter Literary Magazine is thrilled to announce our 2026 Best Of The Net nominees!

“Choose one!” The entity’s voice was commanding. It reminded Oscar of his mother’s voice when she’d yelled at him to eat his beets. [...]

Alien. To me. Like the creature from that movie, perhaps destined for space, an otherworldly reptilian [...]

It is a peculiar quality of youth to believe that the world is arranged entirely for one’s own aesthetic consumption. We were seventeen [...]

A wide-faced, stocky man wearing a beard and a huge T-shirt reading “Still Thinking” pulled a squeaky red wagon down the hill towards Calvin.[...]

When Robert Jacobs opened his eyes that morning, he knew it would be his last. He wasn’t sick or in pain; he just knew. [...]

It’s always at this time of the year, when summer’s passage into winter starts. Everything changes when it gets cold and the day shortens. [...]

Alice was always asking Paul to scratch her back. She’d ask reflexively almost immediately after he sat down beside her on the couch. [...]

Where’s number six, the funeral director asks the young men before him. They shrug in unison. He’s always running late, one says. [...]

He became aware of two long fluorescent light panels and followed their march along the ceiling until he was stopped by double-doors. [...]

When Grace was four years old, she pulled a Korean facial mask from her Christmas stocking. “What’s this?” she asked [...]

Sebastian Prescott sat behind the vintage oak desk. The life insurance proceeds from his wife’s demise had finally been deposited [...]