⚡ Best Microfiction	⚡ The Best Small Fictions
	⚡ Best of the Net	⚡ The Pushcart Prize

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In 2014, when Clare MacQueen founded MacQ’s predecessor, KYSO Flash, she was also serving as Webmaster and associate editor for Serving House Journal (aka SHJ).

Listed among Web Del Sol’s Top 50 Literary Magazines, Serving House: A Journal of Literary Arts was founded in 2010 by Duff Brenna, an award-winning professor (now emeritus) and author of nine books, including Minnesota Memoirs (winner of the Best Short Story Collection, 2013 Next Generation Indie Awards), and Murdering the Mom: A Memoir (Finalist for Best Nonfiction, 2013 Next Generation Indie Awards).

Among his seven novels are The Book of Mamie (winner of the AWP award for Best Novel); The Holy Book of the Beard (called “an underground classic” by The New York Times); and The Altar of the Body (winner of a San Diego Writers Prize in 2002, and the Editors Prize Favorite Book of the Year awarded by the South Florida Sun Sentinel). His most recent novel, The Destructive Element, was released in 2021.

In addition, Brenna co-edited two nonfiction collections published by Serving House Books: Steve Kowit: This Unspeakably Marvelous Life (2015) and Winter Tales: Men Write About Aging (2012).

Duff Brenna is among Clare MacQueen’s most treasured and influential mentors, beginning in 1989 when she took his Honors Advanced Composition course (ENG 500W) at San Diego State University; and continuing through the years from the conception of Serving House Journal in January 2010 to its retirement in May 2018, after publication of 18 issues.

Clare co-designed and co-constructed the SHJ website, which she and her partner Gary Gibbons launched in February 2010. The debut issue was published online six weeks later, in April, and Clare actively expanded and maintained SHJ’s website for nine years. (With permission from her SHJ co-editors, the journal is now archived as a sub-domain [http://shj.kysoflash.com] at KYSO Flash.)

As one of two associate editors for Serving House Journal, Clare also selected flash fictions and visual artworks for publication. And she nominated works for several anthology awards, as described below.

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Best Microfiction 2019 (debut edition):

Health Care by Dick Bentley;
selected by Dan Chaon for publication in the debut anthology

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Best of the Net 2016 *

Sappho Learns of Your Death (An Homage to Steve Kowit) [poem] by Deborah Allbritain

Boats Against the Current [CNF essay] by Angie Athanassiades

Snow Season [short story] by Ron Darian

Don’t Let Yourself Drown [flash fiction] by John Estes

In Da Nang with Dana [CNF] by Roberto Loiederman

A Poet Changes Form [poem] by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

In August [poem] by Lynda Riese

Bonneville [prose poem] by Paul-Victor Winters

A Philosophy of Life (to Steve Kowit) [poem] by Al Zolynas

* Although Serving House Journal is not listed at the Sundress Publications website as a participating journal for BotN 2016, Clare MacQueen’s email records confirm the submission of the works listed above which she nominated in August 2015, with approval from co-editors Duff Brenna and R.A. Rycraft.

Best of the Net 2015 **

Boxing Lessons [CNF] by David Axelrod

Diet Away [poem] by Rebecca Chamaa

The Roof [short story] by Becky Fine-Firesheets

The Newt in the Bathroom [poem] by Sylvia Levinson

The Pruning [poem] by Lynda Riese

The Plague of Gingy [short story] by Lisa A. Sturm

What Does This Woman Want [poem] by Sandra Szelag

I’d Have Liked Some Dinner [poem] by Helen Wickes

** Although Serving House Journal is not listed at the Sundress Publications website as a participating journal for BotN 2015, Clare’s email records confirm the submission of the eight works listed above which she nominated in August 2014, with approval from co-editors Duff Brenna (fiction + nonfiction) and Steve Kowit (poetry).

Best of the Net 2011:

Turkey Pot Pie [poem] by Terry Hertzler

Poughkeepsie, 1962 [essay] by Thomas E. Kennedy

Meditation on Murder [essay] by Yahia Lababidi:
selected by Best of the Net as a Nonfiction Finalist

The Accident [short story] by Stephanie Mood

Milkweed [flash fiction] by Leslie What

The five works listed above were nominated by Clare, with approval from co-editors Duff Brenna (fiction), Steve Kowit (poetry), and R.A. Rycraft (nonfiction).

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The Best Small Fictions 2017:

Five works nominated by Clare MacQueen in November 2016:

March in Denver [prose poem] by Christien Gholson

Raymond [narrative poem] by Steve Kowit

A Dream Without Faces [prose poem] by Joy Moore

Past Life [microfiction] by Lynn Mundell

Noises [microfiction] by Beth Sherman

The Best Small Fictions 2016:

Five works nominated by Clare in December 2015:

Don’t Let Yourself Drown [flash fiction] by John Estes

Boomerang [flash fiction] by Charles Hansmann

Don’t [flash fiction] by Katherine Kane

Bonneville [prose poem] by Paul-Victor Winters

Family Tree [prose poem] by Paul-Victor Winters

The Best Small Fictions 2015 (debut edition):

Happiest Black White Man Alive by Dan Gilmore

Nominated by Clare, and selected by novelist Robert Olen Butler for publication in the debut anthology

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Fall 2018: The Pushcart Prize XLIV (Vol. 44) [2020 edition]:

Nominated by Clare MacQueen in November 2018, with approval from SHJ founding editor Duff Brenna:

Big Bill and the Circus Bear [CNF] by Steve Davenport

Dead of Night [poem] by Christien Gholson

Adjustment [short story] by Robert Kerbeck

Bequeathing the Roses [poem] by Mary Makofske

She Says Stalker/He Says Fan [prose poem] by Alexis Rhone Fancher

Leelah [poem] by Mel Takahara

Fall 2016: The Pushcart Prize XLII (Vol. 42) [2018 edition]:

Nominated by co-editors Duff Brenna and R.A. Rycraft in November 2016:

More Rust Than Nickel [short story] by A. S. Coomer

Celebrities [short story] by Walter Cummins

Original Skin: Race [essay] by Skip Eisiminger

Etiquette of Defeat [poem] by Jack Marshall

Never Been Tested [short story] by Steven Roiphe

Fall 2015: The Pushcart Prize XLI (Vol. 41) [2017 edition]:

Nominated by Clare in November 2015, with approval from co-editors Duff Brenna and R.A. Rycraft:

Sappho Learns of Your Death (An Homage to Steve Kowit) [poem] by Deborah Allbritain

Snow Season [short story] by Ron Darian

Squaring the Circle with the Philosopher’s Stone: Divine Numbers [essay] by Skip Eisiminger

For the Love of Avocados [poem] by Diane Lockward

Leave-Takings [CNF] by Diana Farr Louis

To Athens from Third Base [short story] by Tom Sheehan

Fall 2014: The Pushcart Prize XL (Vol. 40) [2016 edition]:

Nominated for Volume 40 by the Pushcart Board of Contributing Editors in March 2015:

Fisher of Herms [short story] by Roisin McLean

In November 2014, Clare nominated six works, with approval from SHJ co-editors Duff Brenna (fiction), Steve Kowit (poetry), and R.A. Rycraft (nonfiction):

Boats Against the Current [CNF essay] by Angie Athanassiades

Boxing Lessons [CNF] by David Axelrod

At the Padre Hotel in Bakersfield, California [poem] by Ellen Bass

Your Mothers Must Come [flash fiction] by Victor Robert Lee

In Da Nang with Dana [CNF] by Roberto Loiederman

In August [poem] by Lynda Riese

Fall 2011: The Pushcart Prize XXXVII (Vol. 37) [2013 edition]:

SHJ founding editor Duff Brenna nominated six works in October 2011:

Some Kind of Animal [memoir excerpt] by James Brown

Cavallo [ekphrastic short story] by Kimbra Cutlip

The Neophyte [short story] by Clyde Fixmer

Good Advice [short story] by Steve Heller

Heat Wave [short story] by William Luvaas

The Fragrance of Levity [memoir] by Clare MacQueen