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Write and Publish Short Stories Online
Want to write and publish short stories online? On Fireside it's free and refreshingly direct. Write your own story – lived or imagined – and share it with people who actually read.
Every story is automatically made available in both English and German, gets a calm stage and real feedback from your readers. No limits, no fees – just your words.
Recently published stories
The Weight of Indigo
by SHailu
In 4th-century Aksum, the skilled dyer Miriam receives a royal order for twenty bolts of colorfast indigo cloth from a merchant and firmly negotiates its feasibility. The story weaves together craft, female lineage, and the rhythms of ancient trade into a richly textured vignette. It ends mid-scene, with Miriam quoting a fair price and holding her ground with quiet authority.
The Weight of Salt
by Alejandro
Fermín Calaf, a 78-year-old man in rural Catalonia, suddenly stops speaking one morning without any medical explanation. His daughter Roser travels to be with him and slowly begins to understand that his silence is not absence but a deliberate act of self-protection. An old photograph surfaces, hinting at a past she may never be allowed to know.
The Queue at Gate Seventeen
by Khoa
The story depicts a pre-dawn queue outside a visa application center, tracing the quiet indignities endured by people who must submit their futures to an indifferent bureaucratic system. Through observed details — especially an older man rehearsing a 'translation' of his true life into acceptable administrative language — the narrative exposes the structural violence of global immigration systems. Though the text cuts off mid-sentence, its argument is clear and damning: the system recognizes only the shape of a stable life, not life itself.
The Colour of Ripe Guavas
by wanjirukamande
Wambui Njoroge, a seasoned market vendor in Kagio, runs her vegetable stall with quiet dignity and deep rootedness in her homeland. When a calm, well-travelled man named Kamau stops at her stall and bites into a ripe guava without ceremony, a gentle, unspoken connection begins to form between them. The story captures the rhythms of market life and the tentative stirring of late-life affection with subtle, precise observation.
The Cartographer of Collapsed Stars
by Shirazi62
Maryam receives a letter addressed to her late father from a small observatory near Qom, enclosing an image of a stellar remnant he had quietly named Bâzgasht — Return. Visiting the observatory, she learns the star defied all models by refusing to fully collapse, and that her father wrote it reminded him of someone who had decided, against all evidence, to stay. The story unfolds as a tender, grief-inflected encounter between a daughter and the cosmological trace her father left behind.
The Cadastre of Disappeared Streets
by RadekSimanek
The text examines how street renamings in Central European cities—using Brno as a case study—constitute a quiet form of historical violence, leaving physical structures intact while erasing administrative and collective memory. Special attention is given to the cadastre as a centuries-old palimpsest that survives political regime changes while preserving legally charged traces of expropriations and restitutions. The essay combines urbane precision with a melancholic reflection on bureaucracy, memory, and territorial identity.
The Postmark and the Plum Blossom
by LeThi_H
Minh, a young postal worker, notices Lan at a river crossing and later serves her weekly at his counter as she sends letters to Marseille. When she reveals she has been writing to her estranged mother for eight months without reply, he invents a pretext to bring her back. A quiet, unspoken connection forms between two people who both live with absence.
What the Ice Does Before It Breaks
by ErikL
A lyric prose poem follows a pond through the full arc of freezing and thaw, from November's first skin of ice to April's last dissolving plates. A narrator who is both field scientist and poet reads the ice as a language, finding in its seasonal transformation an unspoken metaphor for endurance, silence, and change. The abrupt, incomplete final line deepens the poem's sense of unresolved becoming.
The Signature of Cooling
by Shafi
Inspector Nasreen Chowdhury re-examines a logged drowning case in Dhaka and notices critical inconsistencies: the supposed victim showed no signs of water in the lungs. Through bureaucratic persistence and a secondary autopsy, she confirms that Farrukh Miah—a man terrified of water—was manually strangled and dumped in the river, with the false paperwork pre-written to prevent investigation. The story ends at the threshold of a larger conspiracy involving corruption and arranged cover-ups.
The Good Tablecloth
by MarcoF
Every major holiday, the Esposito family argues about the origins of their white broderie anglaise tablecloth – Nonna Carmela insists it's an heirloom from Avellino, while daughter-in-law Rossana swears she bought it at a market in Caserta. When Federica brings home her boyfriend Andrea for Easter and he innocently admires the tablecloth, he inadvertently steps into a decades-old family ritual. Through his outsider eyes, the reader sees the argument for what it truly is: not a fight, but a living tradition.
What the Water Remembers
by Suraya_MhdNoor
On the morning her youngest son leaves for Kuala Lumpur with no promise of return, Puan Rohani sits at the edge of an old unused well and speaks his name into the dark. The story quietly explores her grief, her pragmatic faith, and her search for a vessel that can hold loss without offering answers.
When You Have Said the Wrong Thing: A Small Guide to Repairing What Words Have Broken
by NaseemQureshi
This personal essay offers a thoughtful, practical guide on what to do after saying the wrong thing – from managing the initial bodily impulse to apologise impulsively, to delivering a genuine apology, to examining the underlying behaviour. It emphasises honest self-reflection over performative remorse and distinguishes between different kinds of harm caused by words. The piece ends mid-sentence, suggesting it is an unfinished draft.
Read first, then write
The path to your own story often runs through reading. Browse the short stories on Fireside to find the tone that fits you – then write your own.
New to writing? Our guide to becoming a better writer, tips for overcoming writer's block and an explainer on what editing brings will help you further.
Write a storyFrequently asked questions about writing short stories
How can I publish my own short story online?
On Fireside you create a free account, write your story directly in the editor and publish it with one click. It appears in the discover feed right away and can be read by everyone.
Is it free to publish short stories on Fireside?
Yes. Writing and publishing on Fireside are free and unlimited. There is no cap on how many short stories you can share.
Do my stories have to be true, or can I write fiction?
Both are welcome. Fireside is open to the lived and the imagined – from quiet everyday observations to pure genre fiction. What matters is the story, not whether it really happened.
Will my story be translated automatically?
Yes. When you publish, Fireside automatically creates an English and a German version so readers can find you in both languages.
How long should a short story be?
A short story focuses on a single moment, character or feeling and is usually read in a few minutes. What matters more than length is that it works in one sitting.