https://www.shelbykinneylang.com/home daily 1.0 2026-06-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/773d3f43-99f8-4d33-a5c2-2785e9214e36/IMG_4916.jpeg Home - Shelby Kinney-Lang is a fiction writer from Laramie, Wyoming. His stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Chicago Quarterly Review, Witness, Santa Monica Review, Joyland, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the 2026 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, selected by Amber Sparks, and the 2023 O. Henry Prize, selected by Lauren Groff. His debut story collection, SNAKE & SUBMARINE, is forthcoming fall 2027. He lives with his wife and daughter in western Massachusetts. https://www.shelbykinneylang.com/writing daily 0.75 2026-06-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/367a2120-a73d-4ed9-b90a-56a188af3744/CQR.jpg Writing - Psychopomp No matter how many times I’ve asked her to say again what happened that evening, to tell me precisely, it’s like she fades a little, becomes not quite real, though I have no reason to doubt my mother has done what she says she has done. Short fiction Fall 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/af4803eb-5900-471a-8fdd-d5d577c682ac/ohenry.jpg Writing - Snake & Submarine Selected by Lauren Groff for the O. Henry Prize https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/41d29ec2-8535-40e3-94ad-895668bdd09f/SANTAMONICAREVIEWSPRING2023l.png Writing - Heart I wanted the worst diagnosis for him, or no diagnosis at all. Nothing to muddle the decision. I admitted this to Martha months later, my voice low and ashamed—if our unborn son had to be sick, I wanted the sickness to be bad. We’d found out something was wrong at the twenty-week ultrasound, the OB walking briskly into the unlit room, looking at the temporarily black monitor, staring through a glass darkly. She took the ultrasound wand, guided it over Martha’s naked abdomen, summoned the gray pulpy image of our developing child, curled asleep, and said, “There is something wrong with the heart of this baby.” Short fiction Spring 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/4bc9ff82-7a17-4068-b7b5-d4aa430521a1/Witness_35_1_Spring-2022_FINAL-COVER-1464x2048.png Writing - Right Ascension, Declination Grace reappeared one night in September during a blizzard. An arctic current had looped south, as far as where we were in Colorado, the beginning, perhaps, of a climate realignment; the storm arrived so early in the season that oaks and maples hadn’t yet lost their leaves, their branches weighted now with a new burden of snow. Short fiction Spring 2022 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/e3bae8fe-c175-46cb-a727-e30dd8026c57/ZCover Writing - Snake & Submarine Not long ago, a friend in California—call her Esmé—became severely ill with a rare and rapidly progressing cancer, and has been posting updates about her condition on a medical blog, which appears on my Facebook feed. Short fiction Winter 2021 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/1633788201977-ZZCL8Q201MZMGXXMJJAF/IMG_3366.jpeg Writing - Bullfrogs He and his wife continued not in silence, but in something worse than silence. Pleasantries and logistics, the studied, uninflected decorum of strangers. Short fiction Fall 2021 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/1624201733582-0QCA10FNGAI9IAFFCY1W/happyjack.png Writing - Happy Jack When it was too much to be alone, and when dreams of my father stormed my mind; when I felt the hot guilt of failure, imagined that sad way my mother sometimes looked at me, like she knew more about me than I knew about myself—I would call Katya up and go over to her place and find a little company. Short fiction Fall 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60c2aff0d012e16cc1bfaa1b/1624201604054-5UH9K9GAAJBDPHTVJO41/Screen+Shot+2021-06-20+at+11.06.32+AM.png Writing - Loss and New Life in the Time of Covid Anna is pregnant again, and with a girl. I can feel my daughter through Anna’s skin—the future pressing into the present—squirms and kicks that protrude across her distended belly. It feels like last time, she tells me. Similar sensations. Personal essay Spring 2020 https://www.shelbykinneylang.com/contact daily 0.75 2026-06-23