This year, our readers were especially drawn toward reflections on the meaning of home and the forces that shape us in youth.

“We’re always going to need stories to help us through our lives, and to explain us to ourselves.”

In the final weeks of the year, there’s no better feeling than getting cozy and delving into your winter reading.

“As a country, we’ve survived horrific moments, so we can survive this one too”

Marie-Helene Bertino teaches you how to build the uncanny into your writing practice.

A woman is replaced by someone who is better in every possible way.

“He indulges few decadent aspirations other than the desire for freedom.”

“It can be really hard to look in the mirror and write about something that you've been complicit in, which I certainly have been.”

“You couldn’t say it because when you did it sounded like an excuse for murder.”

“You always looked back, she thought. You looked back at other years, other Christmas cards arriving, the children younger.”

The cat knew it was over before they did.

Maggie O’Farrell on speculative storytelling, the novelist’s unique relationship with the truth, a writer’s role on a film set, and how fictional narratives will always help us through our lives.

A gift membership to Electric Literature makes the perfect last minute gift for your favorite writer in your life! 🎁

These stories capture the holidays without falling into Hallmark cliches (not that there’s anything wrong with indulging in a Hallmark movie every now and then).

“On the spinning pole, I shapeshift from crucifix to brass monkey to goddess. I flirt with certain men, winking at them through the V of my legs, and ignore others.”

You never know what sort of emotional experience you’re going to be in for when you open a Commuter issue. See which ones resonated most with our readers this year.

“I’m not here to inspire the next generation of writers. I’m here to survive.” buff.ly/hwlCeh7

“I realized my love for Gilmore Girls had never been just about the quirky citizens of Stars Hollow… My love had also grown because I saw my stepfather in the men who filled the role of Rory’s father in Christopher’s absence.” buff.ly/E78ItBX (@peggycarouthers.bsky.social)

Our sponsor, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, is open for applications to the 2026 program! It’s one week of intensive writing workshops, craft sessions, readings, and manuscript consultation under the guidance of incredible authors. Learn more: buff.ly/aX7AaAK

We’re collecting our favorite holiday stories from Recommended Reading and The Commuter to bring you a cozy, winter-themed lineup of short fiction for the last days of December.

Each of the essays below, our most popular of the year, is a window into a distinctive life and moment, each unique and emotionally resonant.

There’s no better way to take stock and celebrate the life that we’ve lived these 365 days than to sink into EL’s best articles of the year.

Electric Lit Social Media Editor Jalen Giovanni Jones (@jalengjones.bsky.social) speaks with “Hamnet” author Maggie O’Farrell about translating her heartbreaking narrative from the page to the screen.

Shane McCrae’s latest poetry collection features a descent into the afterlife, a saucy robotic bird named Law, real tortures, and real redemption.

I had so much fun talking with @rlmaizes.bsky.social for this piece!

Besides the obvious truth that we should all be doing something else with our time, this interview addresses whose story is whose & who has the right to tell it, which I wonder abt all the time.

Omigosh, I love this new flash piece in @electricliterature.com from Andrew Graham Martin! electricliterature.com/prayers-to-t...

A rare one from me: a personal essay (gulp) about Hurricane Ida, loneliness, and burning ATMs

An Irish family living in London celebrates Christmas during a politically fraught year.

Happy Holidays from Electric Literature!!! What books are on your wishlists this year?

These older women protagonists upend our expectations about aging.

“Write toward your obsessions.”

"RACHEL: I’m Rachel. My dad owned the place, but he’s dead now. Do you know how it looked back in the day? BEN: You bet your latkes I do! (RACHEL smiles Jewishly.)" via @mcsweeys.net

“Do children ever get a bone for Christmas? Just a bone?”

“The trickster narrative is an incredibly flexible story that can account for figures like my father, ancient environmental history, and even contemporary trickster politicians.”

"GREEN FLAG: You guys dry hump for a little to 'Jingle Bell Rock,' then the camera cuts away to a burning pine-scented candle." (via @mcsweeneys.net)

“When you are feeling that sort of pain and grief, it’s very easy to feel absolutely alone, like you are in a dream.”

R.L. Maizes on her obsession with fairness, justice, and due process in a world of social media cancellation.

“In Glasgow, Scotland, in 1574, two women landed in legal trouble for a wild public fight.”

“I came to the book in great need of that irreverence, because death was looming over my whole existence.”

I once heard of a reader that finished their TBR list. I also heard of a guy who lives in the north pole and flies around every Christmas Eve. 🎁

“The diary is a way of coping with overstimulation, with modernity, with science, with technology.”

“This unzipping of the self is what draws people to literature.”

Having too many arms amounts to dubious progress at best.

Take a walk back through our most-read personal narratives of 2025, where you can peer into the open window of someone else’s life, and maybe find a piece of yourself in the process.

"If there’s any blessing hidden in the apocalypse, it is that it cracks us open." buff.ly/Av9izNM

“Galápagos is very interested in the inequity that’s built into the fabric of language and how language creates limits in what can be expressed.”

“This year, whether it’s my own inborn cynicism or the function of what has felt like a very long year, I think writers and readers are preoccupied with aftermath.”

Judging by our most popular Commuter posts, 2025 was a year for the literary and irreverent, as well as the horny and deeply reverent.

A story in which you can add a new arm to your body for every little task. buff.ly/9liQVdP