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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.

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

The Constance of Coffee

Weekly Contest #362

My life has been permeated by coffee. Since my birth, as far as I’m told, my house has been filled with half-empty, still steaming ceramic mugs filled with the liquid. My father used it as a remedy for life, drinking several cups a day and taking one step forward at a time. He drank it black, straight from the Keurig, as hot as possible. He would wake up early, don his robe and slippers, and start up the coffee machine. I could hear it working every morning, the sound of it prevailing through my whole life. It’s a magic sound- drops of coffe...

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The Kitchen Canvas

Weekly Contest #362

It was a warm summer evening in the 1990s, and sixteen-year-old Sasha was walking home from school. The rich scent of roasting spices (like cumin or cardamom) wafting through the house, acting as Sasha’s daily "welcome home" cue before she even steps inside.Every afternoon followed the exact same, comforting drill. She would step inside, place her school shoes neatly on the rack, change into her pajamas, and wash the dust of the day from her hands and face."Amma... Amma!" she called out."It’s on the way!" her mother’s voice echoed warmly fro...

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Golden Haze Pastries

Weekly Contest #362

Even though it was far too early in the morning for any sane person to be awake, Celine Haze was quietly setting up a pot of coffee. Celine pressed start on the coffee machine and quickly picked up her novel, ‘Little Women,' to continue reading from her page. She always felt more connected to Beth March in the story, both quiet and saintly, gently stepping into the shadows to let another stay in the spotlight. Although Celine admires Beth’s noble heart, she fears that she will one day end up facing a similar fate like the character, getting ...

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Seasoned Coffee

Weekly Contest #362

Seasoned CoffeeWord Count 1,144Guam was an island with its own quirks, and anyone who spent time there collected a few stories whether they wanted to or not. Navy personnel called it The Rock, partly for its shape, partly for its stubbornness, and partly because once you were assigned there, you stayed put until someone in an office far away decided otherwise. I had my own story from that tour, one that still makes me grin when I tell it. It’s small, nothing dramatic, but like most good sea stories, it reveals something about the place—and a...

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Wedding Banquet

Weekly Contest #362

Wedding BanquetBy Ernest LeongGod knows my father had his faults, but when it came to business, he could see far ahead. Before America entered World War II, he knew when they did, all the young sons would enlist, including Chinese laundrymen’s sons. And the laundrymen here would need help keeping up with the cleaning and ironing. So he came up with the idea of starting a shirt press and wet wash company. He called it Shun Yee Shing Long (translation: “business is thriving and booming”).True to its name, the business took off, especially afte...

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Afiyet olsun: Flaky Pastry, Messy Gulps, and Fear Swallowed Whole

Weekly Contest #362

Just the bare bones of the call to prayer trickle through our Istanbul window, a fragmented melody rising from the minarets below and drifting into the quiet of the modern Bauhaus-style apartment. The namaz always offers me a bit of an anchor throughout the day, providing a rhythmic, grounding heartbeat to an unfamiliar cityscape, although I am not religious myself. Today, the city outside feels vast and looming. Murat is away visiting a friend, leaving me entirely to my own devices. On the counter sits the plastic card key to the apartment;...

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The Lady from the Clouds

Weekly Contest #362

Everything in the kitchen was sticky from the summer heat. The heavy aromas of a finished lunch, the leftovers on the table, our silence... Not even the most delicious bites of food could lessen the quiet shock of what had just unfolded."So, we are packing up?" I asked, as if checking the truth of what I had heard just moments before one more time.The expected answer disappeared into a child’s simple need: "Mom, I’m thirsty!"As he drank his water and shuffled away with that clumsy, endearing toddler waddle to keep playing, it hit me: it was ...

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FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

Weekly Contest #362

FOOD GLORIOUS FOODI looked at my dinner last night and saw the various ingredients in my salad, including lettuce, sprouts, celery, radishes, and mushrooms. I looked upon the piece of medium-rare red meat, no longer mooing in front of me, served along with green beans and a baked potato, and I wondered. How did they know?They are our forefathers — the humans who came thousands of years before us and discovered all the stuff we now take for granted. Forget electricity, computers, the automobile. I was thinking about the food guinea pigs.I’m s...

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Maggots and Milk

Weekly Contest #362

Maggots and Milk Aisle four of the Piggly Wiggly was the least likely place for a flashback, but it happened just the same. While Henry browsed the colorful shelved foods and sundries, his motorized cart, with all its bells and whistles, died. Confident his doting daughter, shopping somewhere in the store, would eventually come looking for him, he had no choice but to wait. Henry found himself simply content to be free of his apartment's confines. His daughter was a godsend since her beloved mother had passed, but a man Henry’s age had to b...

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Biographical Buffet

Weekly Contest #362

My mother never taught me to cook. She was born in 1906 and learned to cook in traditional ways, and without spicy curries and the like. I have never found any pastry that was as good as hers. But I was destined to be a provider, not a housewife and mother, so there was no point in passing those skills on to me. Also, my mother could not eat cheese, and she passed that sensitivity down to me and my sister (but, oddly, not to my brothers). Meat tended to be boiled in the 1950s in England, and I hated it. Fish was not very fresh, so I hated th...

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The Keepers of the Fire

Weekly Contest #362

The kitchen in those early days did not belong to the house; it belonged to the vapor. Outside its threshold, the rooms were newly inhabited by a quiet kind of panic, the beautiful, exhausted haze of new parents navigating the first fragile days of their daughter’s life. The air out there smelled of clean linen, receiving blankets, and the unmistakable, "milky-magic" scent of a newborn stranger who had suddenly rewritten the geometry of the home. But inside the kitchen, the air was heavy, thick with a sanctuary of steam and unspoken understa...

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A Taste for the Present Time.

Weekly Contest #362

The desire for a good meal resides in a place within my conscience which is not easily summed into a single concept. I do not like to cook but I want to eat things that are well prepared. I don't like to cook because I just do not have the skill sets that make it easy. I cannot finely chop anything. My diced onions are always large chunky affairs. I lack patience. I seem to lack patience in every area of my life these days, though maybe that isn't the right way to frame it. I am easily bored now and cooking isn't very engaging. So, what I mu...

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The Adventures Of An Alte Cocker In The Kitchen

Weekly Contest #362

An Alte Cocker’s Adventure In Jewish Soul Food I grew up in a very Jewish place. I went to a public high school where the student body was 90% Jewish. Knowing that the real world was nothing like that, I went to a college where I could see what it would be like to live in the real world where the percentage would be what it really is - 2%. Where I went to college, Clemson University in Northwest South Carolina, it was actually less. Now, my college days were some of the best times of my life. I made great friends there that I am still close ...

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Of Ob Der Tauber

Weekly Contest #362

There was one last ingredient we needed for my funeral on Friday. Young men with halos for hair carried it down the Middwuth Creek in the faded oranges, yellows, and blues of their skirts. Bishop Weir tried to climb the hill past them, but we had to cling to branches of the brambles to pull ourselves along. My shoulders brushed theirs, and one young man’s straw halo licked past the bare skin there. I turned and watched him go, his gold collar hanging so low you could see the nape of his neck and his spine. I watched until he disappeared. Th...

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The Memory Cookbook

Weekly Contest #362

The Memory Cookbook I have spent the better part of my life translating love into exact measurements. As a professional recipe writer, personal chef, and caterer, I know how many grams of butter make croissant dough supple without turning greasy. I know how long a reduction must simmer before it clings to the back of a spoon. For years, I believed food was a craft of precision: heat, timing, weight, and technique. Then my father spent the last twenty-five years of his life teaching me otherwise. He was ninety-five when I finally understood ...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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