Just like the trash cat, we’re looking for treasure in unexpected places.
Like the tenacious fungi and beetles that thrive in dark, abandoned spaces.
The plant that discovers a sliver of soil in an ocean of paving slabs, then blooms.
Look at the crowded shelves of a charity shop and find an object that sings to you. Maybe it evokes a special memory. Maybe it makes you laugh. Maybe it’s haunted. You know you want it. We want it too.

We publish flash fiction between 100 and 750 words, and short stories between 751 and 2000 words three times a year.
We also have calls for Pop-Ups at least twice a year, for flash fiction and with themes.

JP Relph

Trash Cat Lit

We do not accept any work where AI has been used. 
We do not tolerate any work that is racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic or is hateful towards any person or group. Further, we do not wish to read anything that is gratuitously violent or erotic or contains excessive gore or animal cruelty.

November Issue

March Issue

For our 2025 spring issue, we are celebrating the time of renewal, rebirth and regrowth and asking for your flash fiction and short story REPRINTS.

We are looking for work that is previously published online or in print. Treasured words you would like to see dusted off and re-celebrated on our pages. Perhaps the original publisher is no longer or your story feels a little lost to time.

For this issue, we would love to see stories that contain some element of the essence of Spring (see examples on website)

For this springtastic issue we’re welcoming a guest reader and contributor – a writer of vivid, lyrical pieces about landscape, magic and folklore.
We will have one of Sarah Royston’s beautiful, preloved flash fictions in the issue.

https://trashcatlit.com/spring-2025/

Spring General Subs

For this special issue of Trash Cat Lit, we want stories about characters with special collections.
We want weird and creepy, strange and magical, kitsch and retro, disturbing and diabolical.

Give us your characters pretty things, tatty things, special hand-me-down things. Their secret things, displayed things, haunting things and first-things-they'd-save-from-a-fire-things. 

Collections that bring joy, sadness, nostalgia, fear. 
That take up just an inch of shelf space or are crowding someone out of their home, or their mind.

https://trashcatlit.com/flash-pop-up-spring-2025/

Flash Pop-Up Spring 2025

Our tagline is "the unexpected place for treasured words" and for this, our first print anthology of short fiction, we want you to embrace that concept and give us exciting, new tales of the unexpected.

PUBLICATION IN PRINT ANTHOLOGY LATE 2025
ALL PROCEEDS OF SALE TO UK CHARITY, THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS

We're looking for strange and abandoned places. Overgrown and derelict places. Scruffy and mouldering places. Lost, forgotten places. 
Give us atmospheric settings: spooky or vibrant or dangerous or uncanny. Otherworldly or mystical or beautiful in their ugly.

Places we think of as trash. 
Yet we know there is treasure to be found in all places.
Wonderful, unexpected things if you look close enough.
Or if the things want to be found.

https://trashcatlit.com/the-bin-collection/

The Bin Collection - Charity Print Anthology

We are looking to read both literary and genre works that tell a compelling story. We love narrative and a bold, consistent voice.
We also love a strong opener, punchy ending and well-drawn characters.
We actively encourage submissions from writers in historically under-represented backgrounds and communities.
We recommend reading our previous General Issues and Pop-Up Issues to get the best insight into what treasures we seek.
Above all, don’t self-reject – send us your work.

Summer General Subs

My flash piece 'Gelato Shuffle', about two sisters and a soon-to-open gelato place in town, was featured in the pop-up prompted stories issue of Trash Cat Lit.

Gelato Shuffle

For this, I had to use 3 randomly generated prompts: a Town Cut off from Everything, a Hotel Cleaner, & Severe Headache 
"It made the locals more comfortable, calling her the Cleaner, so she played the part. She’d be back later to tidy this mess."

Trash Cat Lit

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