This year we’ve put forward several pieces for the 2016 Write Well Award, run by the Silver Pen Writers Association. This relatively new award seeks to recognise excellence in publishes short fiction in both print and electronic magazines…
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2016 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem Nominations
The Forward Prizes, awarded annually, are some of the most prestigious awards for poetry available in the UK. Each year we nominate four of the best poems published in Neon during the previous twelve months for the Best Single Poem category, the top prize for which is £1000…
Neon Literary Magazine Issue 42
[ Download Digital Edition | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] From a brief biography of a man raised as a chicken, to a mortuary romance, to a tale that teeters on the edge of a precariously-assembled tower, issue 42 of Neon is packed with excellent poetry and fiction. There’s even a grotesquely surreal comic by…
The Keepers
Carla and I draw our blood in the auditorium. They collect our specimens in Dixie cups and send them to a laboratory. Do it! Do it! they urge us. We disrobe and I masturbate onto their microscope slides. My performance improves when I look at Carla’s breasts. My performance diminishes when I look at Carla’s…
Elicit
“Elicit” was originally published in Forklift, Ohio. I am the stretch of easementbeneath a stretcher beneathyour broken body, your weight,and I hate that the last hand you feltwas gloved in blue latex, attached to a man who detached himselffrom the boy who lay bleedingbefore him. I am the minivanand the pilot, frame and feet, I…
Belasis and Hastur
It is the first cold night of Autumnand I smoke a cigarette to myselflooking up to the sky;you can’t see many stars from the citybut you can see Belasis and Hastur, the new constellations. When they first appeared two weeks ago,no one knew what to dobut crane their necks upward to see,everyone asking the same…
Red Feathers
Seventeen-year-old JD DeMondo is positively flapping with excitement, straining against the straps on his seat. He is inside a giant metal bird. This bird is way up high in the sky. The sky is the best colour. This is JD’s first time on a plane. He got the window seat. He is on his way…
2015 Best Small Fictions Nominations
Last year, Claire Joanne Huxham’s story “Correspondence” from issue 38 was selected for inclusion in the Queen’s Ferry Press anthology The Best Small Fictions. This year, we’ve nominated a selection of short works from the magazine once again. Here they all are…
2015 Pushcart Prize Nominations
As December approaches once again, we’ve looked back over the fiction and poetry that has appeared in Neon during 2015, and made six selections to be nominated for the annual Pushcart Prize. This prestigious award collects the best work published by small presses each year. Our nominations are…
Trophy Room, Burnby Hall
A warthog twitched its narrow jaws and blinked alive; a hunting dog peeled its black lips. Our ancestors were speaking through them. One asked why a girl had turned her granddad’s photo to the wall. Another begged his son (too late) run home, unplug the generator chugging inside the living room, waking the neighbours. A…