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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of creative nonfiction short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

150+ Creative nonfiction Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. The creative nonfiction stories on this page deliver exactly what it says on the tin: true stories told in weird and wonderful ways.

Creative nonfiction Short Stories – Page 3 of 10

Salty But Lit

Tara DeYoung

Weekly Contest #341

The engine of the Wagoneer cut out, leaving us in a sudden, ringing silence. Outside, the afternoon sun baked the church parking lot's asphalt, trying to melt the snow, but inside, we lingered in the warmth. We sat there for a few minutes, neither of us ready to move, just clicking our aluminum cans of sparkling water against our teeth. I took a final, sharp swallow, the bubbles stinging my throat, and set the can in the cupholder with a definitive thud.“Shall we?” I asked, my hand already on the door handle.As we stepped out, the cold, cris...

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Peace isn't Passive

Elle Tee

Weekly Contest #341

Time is a fickle architect. It stretches a single second into an epoch when you are watching the light leave the eyes of something you love, yet it compresses four weeks of a relationship into a smear of neon chaos. Time has always been a trickster in my life—obedient to emotion, not logic. It freezes when I am begging it to move and sprint when I am trying to catch my breath.I used to love love. I loved the “warm and fuzz” of it—the specialty of a feeling people treat like an endless tap. But somewhere between the trial-and-error of my twe...

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Do You Disown A Bipolar Friend?

Alex Ghani

Weekly Contest #341

I met Mark, almost two years ago through mutual friends and social media. We hit it off instantly. Summers spent in the park, winters spent eating frozen custard at the specialty shoppe, talking about everything under the sun with someone who could carry a conversation. I mean, if he could sit and talk about existential crises, the delectability of a nice cup of chai with suji halwa, while understanding what the word eschatology meant, things were great. He even helped me pick up my two rescue kittens since he had a car and I do not. That fi...

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The Little House of Mine

Korinne H.

Weekly Contest #341

My friend Sarah and I did college online. This gave us the flexibility to do what we were doing that day. What we were doing was walking down a street in Roanoke we did not know. In late noon, in early fall. We did that a lot that semester, crept around places we had never been—outside of Lynchburg, outside our merry-go-round. Walking, I felt bored. I felt fatigued from schoolwork and an itch for solitude. But Roanoke had bookstores, and Sarah and I loved to read. So on that road we found a bookstore, oddly placed and overpriced. I looked in...

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Still Life with Robin

Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov

Weekly Contest #341

This story contains sensitive content of mental health and substance abuse and death. He was mad. And I mean that in a clinical sense—schizophrenia. For me it was like watching a person who was not just broken, but entirely fractured and splintered inside. Madness crept in gradually and terrifyingly—removing the man I called “dad” and replacing him with someone else entirely. He loved to read, and he loved to walk. He loved to discuss metaphysics and the mysterious, myths and legends, and to visit museums. He had the most wonderful storyte...

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Percy's Plan

Weekly Contest #340

Percy was having the worst morning of his life, and absolutely everyone would be hearing about it. In fact, according to him, he couldn’t possibly meow too loudly for the severity of the situation. He stormed into the bedroom and, after a well-timed back end wiggle, hopped onto the bed. “Wake up, Mom!” He meowed at the top of his little lungs. His mother didn’t budge. “Wake up!” Percy batted her feet with his paw. Groaning, she rolled onto her side. He grumbled, circling around before flopping down at his mother’s feet. Despite his best ...

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Windows

Weekly Contest #340

Rodney Mcshaw never wore his second pair of eyes in the morning. Lili wasn’t sure why. And Rodney always did the same thing every morning. Every morning while the sky was still dim, and the grass still dewed. Lili would see him come out of his house just as the paperboy left his paper outside of it. Then Rodney would stand in his baggy grey jogger sweats, or his threadbare bathrobe and look up and down either side of the street before stopping to take his paper up, and going back inside his den (as Lili preferred to call it). Anyway, after ...

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Wigglenose

Weekly Contest #340

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.Mark Twain When you’re a kid, most birthday gifts are opened, played with, and soon forgotten. The toy we think we want so badly turns out to be nothing like the TV advertisement that made you drive your parents crazy until they finally got it for you. Maybe that bike turns out to be of no use because you learn that you have an insurmountable problem with balance. But if you’re fortunate, there are a few gifts that stand out, and one birthday gift memory has stayed with me through the...

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Clout Chasin'

Franki K

Weekly Contest #340

Sister’s on speed dial, preachin’ ’bout my ways, Callin’ ’em “porch dudes” cause we have a lil' foreplay But I skip the apps, yeah, I skip the bars, Caught a whole husband right under these stars. My sister finds my dating habits infuriating. "Please stop dating porch dudes," she’ll say, as if it's a sickness. "Porch dudes" is her scornful label for men who slow down and flirt when they see me. I don’t do dating apps, skip the bars. My method is simple. I sit on this porch on a rush-hour-clogged street; men slow down to flirt; I flirt bac...

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We Meet Again

Thomas Mckinney

Weekly Contest #341

I was headed back to work at the paper after lunch break, (some break, eat and run). Anyway, I was on the run back to my desk and just got sat down, when the editor called me into his office. This cannot be good I thought, but in I went to a usually surly and grim faced boss.Don't get me wrong, I liked what a do. A roving reporter is better than stuck behind a desk all day. And most of the time Jeff our editor liked my stories. But there were those few times that I would get a grunt, a moan, and then everything that was wrong with my article...

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On the Wings of Geese

Carol Hendrickson

Weekly Contest #341

Carol Hendrickson On the Wings of Geese I have always hated to exercise. I would happily work my butt off pulling weeds, planting a garden, hiking a hill, participating in a 5K Walk for the Cure, or dancing a cross-step waltz for a few hours, but setting out with the intention of walking 30 minutes a day on the dreaded treadmill would never last for more than 14 consecutive days. One distraction was all it would take and I’d be out of there in a heartbeat. Until, that is, the next time I would vow to try it once more. Why did I keep doing t...

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I finally did.

A.L Meric

Weekly Contest #341

The days that followed were gray and formless, a blur of empty rooms and muted sounds. He moved through his life like a phantom, the painful act of letting go having hollowed him out. The house felt cavernous, the silence no longer a canvas for memory but a void of pure absence. He had torn down the shrine, only to find himself standing in the ruins, with no idea how to build anything new. The coffee ritual was gone, but nothing had come to take its place. Mornings were just mornings now, bleak and purposeless.He drifted. He’d find himself s...

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SUGAR

Theodore Bax

Weekly Contest #340

SUGAR The handsome little boy presses his nose to the glass and looks at me longingly. I try to look cute. A bit of a stretch for a strange-looking beagle/basset mix puppy. I have a long, stocky basset body. And an engaging beagle face with floppy ears like Snoopy. My elite nose leads to fun and trouble! I look straight into his mesmerizing blue eyes. Young and kind, he has a baby face, a full head of jet-black hair, and a deep tan from playing soccer. I think I heard his daddy say he’s 10. But he looks 7. I’ll only allow the best ...

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DOC

Weekly Contest #340

Hey y'all my name is Doc. I am my mom's beloved Terrier. Haha, my mom just found out from my DNA that I have 18% Mastiff in me. My mom is some interesting woman. She walked around asking people what they think my breed is. For shock value she let them afterword know that I have Mastiff in me.When I say my mom is interesting, I mean INTERESTING. I mean she is fascinating in every way. She reminds me of a loyal dog.So, my mom named me after a black Jaguar. She took care of that wild cat in the Mojave Desert. When I say black Jaguar, I mean a r...

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Reedsying and Writing, but no 'Rithmatic: Meditations on Perspective

Ian Craine

Weekly Contest #340

REEDYSING AND WRITING BUT NO ’RITHMETIC Meditations on Perspective It was Monday evening. She must have come across the fields. There she was sitting across the bench from me. It was a late spring evening and it already seemed warm enough to sit outside the pub. The sun was low in the sky and its light was flashing through the trees on the edge of the fields. It was right behind Ruby.“Tell the story through Quentin”, she said.It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should say that. I’d been wrestling with my Fau...

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