The Best of the Net Anthology from Sundress Publications has been celebrating literary journals and creative writers since 2006. Each year, they issue a call for nominees to put together a collection of, well, the best of the ‘net from that year.
Submitted each September, the nominations must be for stories published within their fiscal year of July 1 to June 30. Journals are allowed two submissions in each category; since Hippocampus Magazine publishes exclusively nonfiction, we’re able to submit two in total.
Our Best of the Net Noms
We selected one piece from our flash submissions and one piece from our essay submissions:
“When We Used to Glow” by Tom McAllister
Flash editor Wendy Fontaine had this to say about Tom’s piece:
Our readers loved this story for its delicate balance of wistfulness, wonder, and worry. It hits the right note of nostalgia without drifting into sentimentality, with the central image of the lightning bug woven throughout.
We’re incredibly proud of this piece and its continued success. This essay was also selected for the 2025’s The Best American Science and Nature Writing, edited by Susan Orlean. We previously nominated it for last year’s Pushcart Prize.
“Squatter’s Rights” by Ryen Nielsen
Essays editor Steph Auteri had this to say about Ryen’s essays:
I immediately fell in love with the voice behind “Squatter’s Rights” by Ryen Nielsen when it popped up in our queue. The way Ryen tackled gender dysphoria and (a frustrating lack of) body autonomy, all with a laugh-out-loud sense of humor, made this one a no-brainer for me.
Congratulations to Ryen and Tom! We wish both of these incredible writers the best of luck as their pieces are reviewed by the series editors.
