The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024

An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color, 2024

The Garden-Variety Grimoire

Empty Houses (reprint)

Littlest, It’s Been Too Long / Our Way Out is Closing with the Tides

Saint Claire

Hear the Cracking of My Bones Becoming Yours / Your Body Belongs to You, a Stranger / Shortly I Shall Depart

The Mariana Trench Is Holding Me Down

At the bottom of the ocean, the human body makes a lovely home.

A Place to Stay

"India" appears in "The Garden-Variety Grimoire" from the Word's Faire Press.

India

All of the precious objects in a childhood bedroom, for your consideration. Handle with care.

For Sale [2025 BarBe Award finalist]

"A wonderfully macabre portrait of longing, loneliness, the other, and deliciously twisted paranoia."

Tunneling

In an attempt to regain her sense of autonomy after a huge mistake, Ilana agrees to cohabitate with the most advanced humanoid robot the world has even known.

Happybot [2025 Pushcart Prize nominee]

The Poetess

When a little girl wakes up in her foster home to find that her older sister has climbed out of the bedroom window, she must find the courage to follow the trail of clues, and ultimately decide who will remain in their chosen family.

The Rabbit Sisters

You wake up in bed but you're not you. Not anymore. And you never will be again. Who are you? Where are you? And what's next? Empty Houses follows a person who doesn't own their own body, but has pretty much come to terms with it.

Empty Houses [2018 Benevolent Quill Grant winner]

In a town called Albatross, the peacekeepers are rarely seen, but plenty feared. They will only make an appearance when one finds themselves failing, miserable, no longer contributing, a burden - and quite literally, for the birds.

Caridad Cole

Books

Selected work