reedsymarketplace
Assemble a team of professionals
reedsystudio
The writing app for authors
reedsylearning
Writing courses, events and memberships
reedsydiscovery
Get your book reviewed
reedsyprompts
Weekly writing prompts and contests
Writing courses, events and conferences
Upcoming events
Live Editing #4 with Noah Charney
January 26, 2026
Raising the Stakes: Build Tension on Every Page
January 19, 2026
Level Up Your Writing in 2026
January 18, 2026
Previous events
First Impressions: Rocking the First Line and Paragraph
January 12, 2026
Learn how to succeed as a writer from the best in the business.
Every writer needs a Studio
Check out our writing app for authors!
Menu
More apps built by Reedsy
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2024
Submitted to Contest #336
Six and a half hours into the trip, I pull the four wheel drive into a highway-side truckstop and we eat mandarin segments leaning against the sun-warmed bonnet. The fruit is shitty; dry, pithy pieces which taste only a memory of flavour. The bleached-red metal burns dully against my exposed thighs, denim shorts riding uncomfortably up my crotch. Mary spits a grey seed into the dirt and lets out a huff, kicking up dirt with the rubber tips of her canvas shoes. I know she would’ve rather pulled out her top row of teeth, one-by-one, than willi...
Submitted to Contest #279
The gas station tucked between your hometown and Memphis only accepts cash or party favours, so Marie opens her satchel over the counter and lets memories freckle the toothpaste-blue linoleum. An alabaster poker die. A spindle of hair-thin cotton. A deck of playing cards. A button popped from the collar of a school shirt. This is all you have between you and the attendant is looking down at it like a janitor skirting a subway. You want to say: “That's our lives, it’s all written down, but you can't see what it means.” Instead, yo...
Winner of Contest #273 🏆
The girl in the graveyard is your best friend, so you take her home. The night is a bruise between you, a blotch of rogue in the passenger window; the colour of fruit left out to fester. The body pries at her seatbelt, a finger, then two. The radio echoes static, the body shuffles in her seat. You study the face; the similar slice of jaw, the nose humped from where a baseball had hit her at twelve, just slightly off centre. The skin like a rain-licked plastic bag. The stink of musk and sulphur. You want to look away but you cannot. She's so ...
Submitted to Contest #249
The morning after my daughter dies, I drive her to an IHOP. The road is scabbed with filled, worn-down, then refilled potholes so by the time we pull into the parking lot the old station wagon is shaking like a wet dog and Marnie’s left cheek is plastered to the vinyl back-seat. Cornsilk hair wreaths her tiny head, lips parted in sleep, pink fists only starting to grey at the knuckles. She looks so much like a porcelain doll that it makes my chest ache. Morning hangs a little lower with empty streets; sun scalds the asphalt, leaving dimples ...
Submitted to Contest #239
We don’t call it a rain, not at first. In the purpled night, stowed away behind weatherboard walls, we imagine it's anything else. An incessant pattering against the asphalt: children throwing stones. A shatter that pulls us headfirst from our sleep: a drunk losing grip on his bottle. The scrape of objects sliding over dew-glossed footpaths: roller skates, scabbed knees, feral cats’ claws. Speculations which make sense. In the mornings, we pull lost things from the gutter like hair from a shower drain. Ring Pops which have already begun to b...
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email:
13 likes
