Welcome to our latest newsletter. We have submission stuffs, a wealth of Trash Family pubs to read, and a bunch of feline story prompts.

Submission Stuffs

Our final submission call of 2025 opens tomorrow!

For this flash pop-up, we are looking for stories about CATS. We’re excited to see lots of different styles and genres celebrating the feline in one way or another.

Only domestic cats for this one – and no cats being badly hurt or killed please. Our trio of cat judges will be very unimpressed.

The submission form will go live at 9am (GMT) and you have until 8pm on the 14th December to send your feline flash. This pop-up issue will be on the website early in the New Year.

Here are some other submission opportunities in fellow lit mags if you have treasures to send out into the world.

• Wild Willow Magazine are open until 15th December for subs to their “wintergreen” issue. This magazine publishes quarterly, rotating themes of trees, herbs, flowers and fruits. They want work that: “intertwines nature and the human experience, showcasing the wonderful, weird, and wild aspects of the human condition.” One short story up to 2500 words or up to three flash, 1000 words each. Read all about the sub calls HERE
• The rather quirky Major 7th Magazine, are curating quarterly “literary mixtapes” where your work should have the title of an actual song and artist. You can submit up to 3 pieces up to 750 words each, you can sim sub – but you must check the song titles haven’t already been used. Deadline is Jan 1st. Check it all out HERE
• Plott Hound Magazine are publishing something a little different – spec fic stories from the POV of animals. Here’s what they say they are looking for: “-Stories with anthropomorphized animals as viewpoint characters and protagonists, Animal-centric speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror), Stories with uncommonly written about animals as protagonists, Stories that dig deep into the senses and experience of animals, Stories that explore the cultures and societies of animals, not just cultures and societies with animals. Think of rabbit language and warren infrastructure in Watership Down, or the clans and warrior code of feral cats in Warriors.”
  Flash up to 999 words, short story sweetspot is 3000-4000
  Get all the info and inspiration HERE

As with all literary publications, including Trash Cat Lit, you should always read a number of the published works before submitting yourself. Get to know what they like and decide if it’s the right home for your treasured words.

Trash Family

We love to celebrate our contributors beyond Trash Cat Lit by sharing the cool stuffs our Trash Family members have going on:

Publication and other Stuffs

We cannot keep up with all the TF successes, but we try! Here’s some of what we spotted on the socials. Lots to celebrate and some amazing reading to be done.

Nicole Brogdon has a slinky, sassy piece with Tangled Locks Journal. Go read To Ms Death

“I’m sick of you, slinking in uninvited on fishnet legs, stilettos clinking. Your teeth click clacking, your clove and bone perfume casting a voodoo pall.”

Lisa Thornton has published a braided essay on writing craft in JMWW Journal. Go read Word Count

“The challenge of flash fiction is, of course, to pick the right words to tell a complete story, since the writer is allowed so few. To make sure the words are the perfect ones. And to use the blank spaces where words cannot fit as story-telling tools as well. But isn’t that true of all writing?”

Gavin Turner has a gothic ghost story novella coming soon – he has graciously popped an extract on his website. Go read Chopsticks and be tempted to read more.

“She never actually found out who stole the lebkuchen. They were the expensive ones that her Mutti would not buy. Her teacher kept them in a glass jar on his desk but refused to share with the pupils even if they worked especially hard.”

Heather Haigh has a stunning piece exploring gender/sexuality in Red Rose Thorns. Go read Mother?

“Yesterday, the cellar won—sucking her down into a darkness thick as quicksand, a hole where granite walls lean in and leer, where shadows hide the clawing and gaping of grasping hands and hungry, hungry, always hungry mouths.”

In the Flash 500 (2025, Q3) competition, we saw two Trash Fam in the top 3! Gill O’Halloran won with her cracker The Grass is Always Greener and Allison Wassell deservedly snagged 2nd place with Emily’s on Track

“What if his unpregnant mother hadn’t married his homesick Irish father, had let him go back to Ireland alone, and found a different man, a London man, one who could ride the top deck of a London bus without feeling sad, could navigate the tube without a map…”

“Emily’s on track. She’s ticking off targets, racing through reading schemes. She knows what a fronted adverbial is and can use one correctly in a sentence.”

Gooseberry Pie Issue 37 also has two Trash Fam in it’s gorgeous pages. Mairead Robinson (also Fagan) with When My mother Is Admitted to Hospital, We Organise a Team of Cleaners to Perform a Deep Clean of Her House and Lisa Thornton with Subway Was Real When You Worked There

“‘What shall we do with this clutter?’ they call as they manhandle my long dead father from out of his easy chair, him grumbling as they prise his fingers from the cracked leather; we thought Mum had cleared him out years ago but, ‘it’s amazing what people hold on to,’ the cleaners say.”

“…reads my son aloud from my senior yearbook and I’m not sure yet who the inscription is from but then he says no one has fallen out of my car lately and I exclaim Earl! because that’s a reference to Jason falling out of the Mercury while he was dipping that nasty tobacco he did sometimes…”

Jo Clark has a beautiful, lyrical microfiction in Westword. Go and enjoy On Leaving a Familiar Place

“Today-You is walking the chalk ridge at Hughenden. Today-You is clocking the exposed white-lime bones of the land, tangled through with the limbs of ancient forest. Today-You is sitting on the flinty path, carefully loosening your own limbs from those bones.”

We see two Trash Fam in the fab pages of Urban Pigs Press. Heather Haigh with Press Room Thirteen, Deep Within The Bowels Of Parliament and Scott MacLeod and his work, Restoration Hotwire.

“Ha, ha. Well, Miss Green, study after study has demonstrated that anxiety feeds on uncertainty, that depression feeds on social anxiety, that mental instability feeds on social instability, that people find unpredictability in these turbulent times extremely distressing, and what we are offering is security, predictability, stability. What we are offering is the relief of feeling safe.”

“Jesus H. Christ! thought Aldo. What kind of jackass shoots out his own back window? Same kind who buys a car he can’t afford, I guess, and then misses the first three payments.”

aaaaaand THREE Trash Fam have work in Literary Garage. Brilliant short stories from Charlie Kondek with Sincerely, N Grsk and M.E Proctor with Ramona. Then a piece of cracking voice-driven flash from Ian Johnson with Hot and Cold on a Long Taut Road

“One could have said NGRSK2059NTS found short stories and poems “interesting,” except the bot didn’t have interests the way humans had interests, only areas of focus in pursuit of its function that were open to new ideas, or maybe better thought of as new tactical variations for it to consider.”

“He didn’t mind being off balance. The feeling would disappear as soon as they were back in San Francisco. The demands of their respective jobs would bring both of them back to earth soon enough. All it would take was one stack of crime scene photographs dropped on his desk and the Hotel Del Coronado would immediately look as nostalgic as the faded turn-of-the-century pictures for sale in the shop downstairs.”

“A twinkling gas truck passed the other way. I caught my reflection in its flank – some funhouse mirror lunk stuffing the bucket seat of a leased Chevy Impala, as white as Christmas and double the disappointment

and the Nomination Goes To…

We are blown away to see how many of our Family are receiving nominations for literary awards for their fiction. We nominated a total of 26 of our peeps for awards this year – here are a few from other magazines (note: some of our Fam have multiple noms, we’ve only shared one)

Timothy C. Goodwin – Flash Frog, Best Microfiction
The First Time I Had Sex, Aliens was on TV

Madeleine Armstrong – Bunker Squirrel, Pushcart
I’ll Invite Myself

Scott MacLeod – Bunker Squirrel, Pushcart
Noise Covenant

Cole Beauchamp – Literary Namjooning, Pushcart
A New Trio

June Gemmell – Temple in a City, Pushcart
The Homecoming

Emily Rinkema – Temple in a City, Pushcart
Lou

Angela Joynes – South 85 Journal, Best Small Fictions
Surviving

Beth Sherman – Inkfish Magazine, Pushcart
Daily Planner For an Anxious Planet

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Writing Prompt

We’ll end this newsletter with a prompt to help you get writing.

With our cat-themed pop-up opening tomorrow until 14th December, we figured we’d help your literary brain juices along a little.

• When aliens crash land in a small, out-of-the-way town, they encounter a street-smart stray who convinces them that cats used to rule but have been overthrown by humankind. The aliens aren’t having it.
• A vampire child, cut off from its people, is starving in a basement when a hunting cat offers to share its meal. The vampire could drain the cat – but it finds connection instead.
• A three-legged blind cat, written off by everyone, aligns with a witch when she discovers the feline can sniff out healing plants – and the other kind – that nobody else can find.
• In an abandoned movie theatre, kids find the ghosts of several former cat stars – who share their stories of Hollywood and beyond.
• A woman finds a batch of weird eggs in the woods – they hatch into kittens, sort of.

Thank you for reading our newsletter.
We hope we have inspired you with the amazing writing and readings.
We’ll see you next month.
Happy writing and reading.