Selected Publications

Literary Journal Publications

“Any More Happiness” - New World Writing Quarterly

“Housekeeping” - American Literary Review (March 2026 Flash Flood Winner)

“Taxonomy” - The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts

“Make and Model” - Hawai’i Pacific Review

“Trajectory” - XRAY Lit Mag

“Fifty-Fifty” - Necessary Fiction

“On Your Left” - Louisiana Literature (print)

“The Current” - Write or Die Magazine

“E-S-O-T-A” - Midway Journal

“Dust” - Shadowplay (print)

“Distribution” - Identity Theory

“Fireworks” - JMWW

“Hold, Buy, Sell” - Whisk(e)y Tit Journal

“Mulligan” - Blue Press (print)

“Porcelain” - XRAY Lit Mag

“Inventory” - Cleaver Magazine

“Reflexes” - Fictive Dream

“The Driver” - Prosetrics Literary Magazine (print)

“What Would You Say?” - Heavy Feather Review

“We’ve Been Looking Everywhere for You” - Hoxie Gorge Review

“Homage, Ouachita County 2005” - Pithead Chapel

Book Publications

Sedgwick County: Stories, forthcoming from Roadside Press in September of 2026

Order Sedgwick County HERE!

This Is Where You Are, Roadside Press - available at Magical Jeep, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble

Praise for Sedgwick County

“Nicholas Claro is a master of literary minimalism. In the lives of his achingly relatable characters, a simple pause in speech can denote a chasm of emotional distance and a flit of the eyes can announce a heartbreaking accusation or confession. He ranks among my favorite living writers. Sedgwick County demonstrates why.”

- M.C. Schmidt, author of Simple Songs for the End of the World and Tell Me Something Before I Show You

“Nicholas Claro beautifully captures domestic quirks, quiet devastations, and subtle triumphs, exploring—always with palpable empathy—the sometimes faint lines between love and disdain. Pets go missing, loved ones leave, and part-time parenthood breeds broth profound love and petty resentment. Claro is a skilled minimalist who also manages to illustrate every crucial minor tic and twitch, elegantly balancing precise, pointed prose with intensely striking lyricism. These Kansas-bound stories are grounded in realism but, much like the middle of this fast and complex country, they bring us complicated, familiar characters thrust into bizarre, often unsettling situations. Sedgwick County is a stellar and unyielding second collection, further establishing Claro as one of today’s most astute and compassionate storytellers.”

- Cassidy McCants, author of Notes on Drifting

Praise for This Is Where You Are

“In the tradition of Carver and Dubus, Claro delivers an intimate and unflinching portrayal of characters struggling with the anguish, absurdity, and uncanniness that is modern life. These fifteen stories will pull you in and refuse to let go. Nicholas Claro is young writer to watch.”

- Soon Wiley, author of When We Fell Apart

“Nicholas Claro’s This Is Where You Are is a pyromaniac debut, an incendiary study in the life-altering, explosive moments we rig against ourselves and, ultimately, detonate. Each of the stories in his collection brings us right up to the edge of where the blastwave will hit, and we can’t help but watch, transfixed and incapable of looking away, as Claro’s characters light the fuse. This is the emergence of an essential, outstanding voice in fiction.”

- Barrett Bowlin, author of Ghosts Caught on Film

“The stories of This Is Where You Are pulse with their own heartbeats. The gut-punches they deliver are encased in pure poetry, in language that gleams with taut and icy clarity. Claro peels back the layers of the everyday to reveal the inner lives bristling with guilt, with resentment, with uncertainty. Secrets nestle in corners, deep-seated frustration comes out swinging, and seemingly pleasant exchanges crackle with tension. And while these stories are often grave and poignant, they’re also sharp with humor and wit. They surge off the page like living things, taking us from the hazy remembrances of childhood grief, to the doomed spiral of a plane crash, to a wonderfully fraught scene where diners face off over a knife. This Is Where You Are announces a marvelous new talent in fiction.”

- Amy DeBellis, author of All Our Tomorrows