Hub City Shorts
We're thrilled to announce a brand new initiative today: Hub City Shorts is a series of publications edited by Gabriel Bump, Mesha Maren, and M. Randal O’Wain, coming in 2027 from Hub City Press. This design-forward, collectible series of small-format books celebrates short forms from new, established, and rediscovered Southern writers. Hub City Shorts will feature roughly six stories from six writers, collated by state. Our first two editions will feature South Carolina and Mississippi writers. Both editions will be published together in 2027.
With a distinctive design and collectible format, Hub City Shorts offers readers an elegant, portable way to experience the South’s most compelling stories—both new and rediscovered. The books will be slim and elegant–ideal for travel, gifting, or dipping into between longer reads. Beyond this initial states project, Hub City Shorts will enable Hub City Press to accommodate hybrid forms, novellas, book-length essays, and other works outside of the standard format.
Our first two editions will feature South Carolina and Mississippi. Both editions will be published together in 2027.
Submissions
For our initial launch of Hub City Shorts, we'll be looking only for stories for our state editions. The editors will host an open a call for submissions for fiction from emerging writers for each state edition. The editors are looking for stellar short stories from early career writers who have been living in their home state for a total of 10+ years. The editors will solicit work for this series as well.
Submissions Open: November 15
Submissions Close: January 1
Submission Fee: Free
Eligible emerging writers must only meet the following criteria:
- Have not published a book or appeared in major national publications.
- Were raised in South Carolina or Mississippi, or have lived in either state for at least 10 years.
Work submitted to the open call must meet be:
- A single short story with a maximum of 10,000 words.
- Not previously published in a journal with large circulation. Work published in regional or small circulation journals will be considered.
- From a writer with no book and residence in the state for 10+ years.
About the Editors
Gabriel Bump is from South Shore, Chicago. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award. His second novel, The New Naturals, was a Washington Post, Boston Globe, and New York Times Notable Book of 2023. His third novel is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Bump's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He teaches at the UMass MFA for Poets and Writers, his alma mater.
Mesha Maren is the author of the novels Sugar Run, Perpetual West, and Shae. Her short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, Ecotone and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at Duke University.
M. Randal O’Wain is the author of Meander Belt: family, loss, and coming of age in the working-class south (Nebraska, 2019) and the story collection Hallelujah Station (Autumn House, 2020). His essays and stories have appeared in Masters Review, Zone 3, Hotel Amerika, Guernica, and Oxford American. He holds an MFA from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and teaches at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
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