Chapbooks

Last Days of the Microsaurs
The Cupboard Pamphlet. Spring 2018.
Winner, Seventh-Ever Cupboard Contest.

“How would dinosaurs live in a materialist world of late capitalism and technology? Last Days of the Microsaurs cleverly answers that question with wit and humor. I chose this collection because it is weird and funny and heartbreaking all at the same time. These pieces creatively imagine our doomed reptilian ancestors in the modern world, and in doing so, they peel back our contemporary culture to reveal obsessions, insecurities, and oddities. There's a clarity of vision here in these words that surprise and delight me.” ~ Contest Judge SJ Sindu, author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies.

"Kelsie Hahn’s Last Days of the Microsaurs dares you to imagine if: her dinosaurs outright reject extinction, and her prescient (and prehistoric) flashes are fragile and vicious and outstandingly funny." ~ Lily Hoang author of A Bestiary


"The Last Days of the Microsaurs is a funny and deeply-felt collection, a pleasing wander through a world populated with dinosaurs who ride the bus, attend Weight Watchers and use emojis. It's illuminating to follow along as these primeval lizards navigate a landscape much like our own, rife with all of the quandaries of modern life. This is the fiction you'll want to be reading in our surreal moment." ~ Carrie Murphy author of Fat Daisies

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Responsibility
Lit House Press. Fall 2014.

“Kelsie Hahn’s Responsibility is a donation to readers, an altruistic offering of petite stories with unexpected punch: reality is launched into magic and magic is constructed from the genuine, and somewhere in these miniature gems, you fall in love with Hahn’s deceivingly simple writing, her alluring characters, in the tragic wonder of the apogee and grandiosity of the small.”
~ Lily Hoang, author of Unfinished, The Evolutionary Revolution, Changing, and Parabola

"Hahn is a mistress of melancholy, master of the everyday dilemma. Her work emits a clear and devastating truth."
~ Jennifer Militello, author of Body Thesaurus and Flinch of Song

"Each vignette in Responsibility explores the horror of everyday life - from the tiniest tragedy to the largest disaster - and allows these horrors to become little ghosts that haunt and echo from page to page."
~Allie Marini Batts, author of You Might Curse Before You Bless, This is How We End, and Unmade & Other Poems.

"What is the best friend for a child, the collection seems to ask, for 'If you give the boy a dog, it's going to die' and 'if you give the boy a cat, he will grow up weird.' One answer is a baby brother. Another answer in this lush, playful, fast-paced series, is 'Hope for the best' and as we read, we hope, we marvel, we laugh."
~Laura Madeline Wiseman, author of American Galactic, Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience, Queen of the Platform, and Sprung.

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Short Fiction

Offspring, Jellyfish Review. January 23, 2018.
314 Words. Bambiraptor gives birth. 

Noble/Gas Qtrly. 204.4. December 2017.
Diet, 142 Words. Ankylosaur parties hard.
Vocalization, 234 Words. Iguanodon rules the network.
Vertebrae, 82 Words. Diplodocus works road maintenance.

Naming the Baby, Passages North. Issue 37. Spring 2016.
5,571 Words. A woman searches for a lost baby, lost memories.

"Mary is naturally absent-minded and often finds credit cards or keys or remote controls in her freezer. And obviously the baby was not there, and obviously the baby is not the same as lost keys or an electricity bill, but she is gone in the same way that those things are gone, lost somewhere in Mary’s memory like stones into a hole."

Trackways, Fairy Tale Review. The Ochre Issue. Spring 2016.
294 Words. Edmontosaurus goes on trial for murder.

"The crime scene is filled with foot prints, long and lean. 'See how the prints stutter, pause, overlap. Here she confronts the victim. Here she plunges the knife between the victim's ribs. Here she stops and nibbles a juicy leaf,' the prosecutor says."

Taphonomy, Wyvern Lit. Haunted Issue. December 2015.
213 Words. Lady Gaga Triceratops wants to be famous.

"She shoves her head through the moon roof, shattering the glass, screams for faster faster faster, throws vinyl shoes and wine corks to the crowds."

Your Possession, Goddessmode. Cool Skull Press, Fall 2015.
329 Words. The truth about Granny and Dracula, maybe. Inspired by King's Quest II.

"Perhaps she knows him when she is young. She the peasant girl, he the Lord Dracula's lonely son. They sail leaf boats on a lake silver with fish, not a drop of poison in it."

Collective Property, Quaint Magazine. Issue Four. April 2015.
580 words. A neighborhood dog refuses to be caged.

"This new dog would tower over the old dog. She is lean and white except for a coffee-toned head and saddle, and her long jowls tremble with every howl. She refuses to be taken in, cared for, cleaned, even though three or four families would happily oblige."

Caketrain. Issue 12
Appearance, 119 Words. Pachycephalosaurus rides the bus.
Offensive Adaptations, 148 Words. Pinocasaurus falls in a tar pit.
Origins, 294 Words. Tiktaalik's night out.
Claws, 115 Words. Shuvuuia goes bowling.

The Evidence of Where We No Longer Live, Sundog Lit. Issue 7. December 2014.
Nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net Anthology 2015.
312 Words. Love, or something like it, and fossils.

"It’s all in those hips, baby. Let me see your vertebrae move. I like that confident pubis. It’s all forward, in my face, not sad and down and backward and tragic."

Night Train, Firebox Fiction. September 30, 2014.
Effects on Dinosaurs, 152 Words. Cryolophosaurus gets lost in the mall.
Metabolism, 83 Words. Gigantosaurus attends Weight Watchers.
Diapsids, 254 Words. Rival dinosaurs conduct family reunions.

Mother of the Dragon Boy, Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit, August 8, 2014.
464 Words. A boy gets a pet dragon, against his mother's better judgment.

"The first night Jeffery brought the dragon home, it bit off his hand when he attempted to feed it a slice of beef. Jeffery’s mother had told him so. She told him so again."

Responsibility, Barrelhouse. Issue 13. Summer 2014.
745 Words. What is the best pet for a child?

"If you give the boy a fish, you’re taking the cowardly way out. Fish are idiots."

Blood Lines, Everyday Genius. June 5, 2014.
201 Words. A mother and daughter clash over bed bugs and other matters.

"The mother has a long list of things she is trying to say to the daughter. Show yourself some respect. You’re not a dishrag. You’re not a vending machine. You’re not a tray of free cheeses."

Donkey Kong Country D'eux, Cartridge Lit. June 4, 2014.
221 Words. Dixie Kong struggles to connect with her boyfriend.

"Dixie asks Diddy for migraine medication. One pill. All she wants at this point. She doesn’t care about his time or attention, flowers or candy, promises or whispers, the soft touch of fingers through fur."

Ilsibill in the Night, Alone, NonBinary Review. #1.
Finalist for Best of the Net 2014
195 Words. The wife half of "The Fisherman and his Wife" gets her say.

"Her sleeping husband pitches and yaws beside her, salt and fish and ancient rope oozing from his skin. His breath folds into the sea sounds crackling at the window."

Looking, Psychopomp Magazine, Contest Feature. March 28, 2014.
5,001 Words. A man with X-Ray vision struggles with the use of his power.

"He first saw Julie in a grocery store, and two things about her captured his attention: perfect teeth and lead-lined underwear. She flickered in and out of his vision as a bikini-shaped block, bra and panties lined with jointed plates of lead as she moved through the produce section, testing the firmness of peaches."

Teacup Breeds, Storm Cellar. Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 2014.
821 Words. A tiny dog that just won't quit.

"Soon, Leisha realizes the dog has been shrinking. Leisha could wash her in a tea kettle now."

Limbs. Finery. March 12, 2014.
103 Words. Argentinosaurus goes apartment hunting.

"Argentinosaurus cannot enter the luxury apartment building. He can’t even grasp the door handle."

The Rollicking Adventures of Todd and Jane, Timber. Vol. 3 Spring 2014.
495 Words. The adventurers Todd and Jane confront dire situations.

"Jane and Todd are trapped on a raft in the ocean. The only bottle of fresh water ran dry three days ago. Todd fills the bottle with sea water and raises it in a toast."

What My Daughter is Holding, The Southeast Review, 32.1. Spring 2014.
Finalist, World's Best Short-Short Story Contest 2013.
411 Words. When the family rabbit dies, an unprepared father must respond to his daughter's questions.

"My daughter is strangely undisturbed by the corpse in her arms.
'Can’t we just put him in the oven and warm him back up?' she asks."

Chicxculub Impactor, Passages North. Online. January 23, 2014.
238 Words. A dinosaur couple gives birth to their first child.

"When newly-mother Eoraptor brought home the baby to newly-father Eoraptor, she decided some changes needed to be made."

The End of It, Rougarou!. Spring/Fall 2013.
938 Words. A couple's vacation is interrupted when they discover a broken animal crate.

"We stumbled through the grass to the crate, stirring up giant mayfly-looking things and already sweating through our shirts. Cars groaned by, sucking air, rushing to get out of the nothingness of pastures and patchy woods, yet here we were, searching for an animal that probably never existed in the first place."

The Ant Farmer, Corium Magazine. Issue 15, Fall 2013.
559 Words. A father and daughter attempt to bond over an Ant Farm.

"Despite Rebecca’s attentive monitoring and care, only one of the eggs changed: grew bigger into a dotted grain of rice, then into a stiff, waxy white ant (she tearfully reported that the baby had died), and then an unfolded ant, black and gleaming with a magnificent carapace that Rebecca marked with a dab of nail polish so she wouldn’t lose the baby (a girl, she announced) among all the daddies."

Spiders are Not People, Lunch Ticket. Winter/Spring 2014.
1,407 Words. A lonely woman discovers she has never been alone at all.

"Finally, a single fat-bodied spider descends on what looks like a strand of spit inches away from my eye and says, 'I speak for the spiders.'"

Lions of a Stony Shore, Pantheon Magazine. Issue 3, October 2013.
583 Words. A new arrival threatens the sea lion king.

"The old lion lay at the edge of the pebble shore and prayed, first to the mighty golden lion, then to the gentle silver lion. He never lost, he reminded them. He never lost once."

The Hermitage, Jersey Devil Press. September 2013.
Nominated for a Pushcart.
293 Words. A hermit crab evaluates some new real estate.

"This crab is angry, scuttling around in his shell painted like a soccer ball. Rage infuses his posture, the angles of his one big claw and one little claw, the violent jags he tracks in the sand."

The Kid's Guide to Pretending Nothing is Wrong, Metazen. August 2013.
871 Words. How to keep an egg, a family, alive.

"Beg your mom to take you to the library. Do not acknowledge that you know the internet has been shut off. Pretend you think that books are better."

Not Cryogenics, SpringGun. Issue 8, Summer 2013.
669 Words. An inconvenient death in the office.

"He opens his freezer and pulls out a plastic bag, frost-rimed and tightly wound around something dark. He unwraps the bag to make the contents clearer – it looks like something he might have cleaned out of a gutter."

A Good, Clean Shot, Matchbook. July 2013.
Nominated for a Pushcart.
374 Words. Truth and lies in the death of the family zebra.

"Bartleby the zebra lies in the North pasture in a pool of red muck. He is definitely dead—Lorne says the bullet went straight through his heart."

Deep in an Epidemic of Whitenose Syndrome, The Waterhouse Review. Summer 2013.

Why We Shouldn't Marry, 1/25. #2, May 2013.

Souvenirs, Thunderclap Magazine. May 2013.

Snorkeling
The Fate of Macaroni
In Which I Find a Mermaid, Short, Fast, and Deadly. Winter 2013.

Anti-Ralph, Inkwell. Spring 2010.

Kindling, Glass Mountain, 2009.

It Didn’t Have To Be This Way, senior honors thesis, University of Houston. A collection of eight short stories based around the central theme of failure. Spring 2009.

Certifiable, Glass Mountain, 2008.

The Best Thing, NANO Fiction. Spring 2008.