6000+ Coming of Age Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. No matter how old you are, there’s just something inherently relatable about coming-of-age tales. Discover the best new coming-of-age stories right here!

🏆 Winning stories

“Dear Aunt Beth” by Sandrine Hu

🏆 Winner of Contest #261

January 27, 1997 Dear Aunt Beth Thank you for giving me a dollhouse for Christmas. I love it! Mom says I need to write you a letter to say thank you. Thank you!Love your neice Hanna December 26, 1998 Dear Aunt Beth,  Thank you for the chemistry set! It is really cool! I already made a volcano! It exploded everywhere and the turkey got wet! Dad was mad but mom thought it was funny!  Love  Hanna April 25, 1999 Dear Aunt Beth,  Thank you so much for taking me to Disneyland! I had the best time ever. I specially liked the...

133 likes 50 comments 50

Read story

“Your Animal Side” by Keba Ghardt

🏆 Winner of Contest #257

Eddie was sweating. He'd been told, before putting on the suit, to drink a ton of water, so much your stomach hurts, and he bet there was an extra ten pounds of perspiration in the cheap costume fur. It certainly smelled like it, but rule one of wearing the suit: never take off the head. "That's an automatic write up," said Rob. "If you do it, and Faye finds out you subbed in without approval, you are off weekend hours, my friend. Good luck sucking up Tuesday tips." "I get it, I get it," Eddie had insisted. "I'll stay away from French revolu...

84 likes 37 comments 37

Read story

“When I Read Beckett” by Liz Grosul

🏆 Winner of Contest #241

…in…in this room…cursed room…loved?... cursed…. where she slept…half-grown in her hometown t-shirt…shorts…no shorts…t-shirt worn with holes…on the floor…he having thrown it…under the bed…dust collected and swept and settled again…. and again…who?... he… not she?...gracious!...there for the first time…assuredly last time…no boys in the room, father said…keep out!...nodded her head… but in the room…blue light hugging the window…scotch tape…peeling off the paint whether chipped or freshly laid or…exhumed…he found her in the— no, not found…held…...

94 likes 75 comments 75

Read story

⭐️ Recommended stories

“The Anger Dragon” by James Scott

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #278

Tommy’s bright blue eyes followed the slow drift of the important papers over the water’s surface. They looked like the toy sail boats on his favourite lake at the park. Each leaked his multicoloured markings into the bath water, making pretty patterns that moved and changed. Now that his anger dragon had retreated back into its cave - words his Papa had taught him to explain the big feelings he sometimes had - he wondered how it had all happened. He had just been so MAD! When the bathroom door behind him eventually swung open, he accepted t...

32 likes 31 comments 31

Read story

“THAT THING ON THE HILL” by Willem Foss

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #274

(Warning: Gore, bad words)Ya hear scientists and suchlike, -ologists of all stripes, they go say they’re reasonable. Ethical. Good. You show ‘em the whole history of their profession, how for every Carl Sagan or Marie Curie, there’s ten Unit 731’s and an electroshock clinic and an Ahnenerbe and a Tuskegee and every kind of secret pervert and sadist and psychopath under the sun, how the AIs they’ve built help our overlordly parasites in grey corporate Olympii suck up what’s left o’ our humanity, how their drugs work only for symptoms and prof...

22 likes 9 comments 9

Read story

“The Rag Man” by Richard Stickann

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #267

It was a fragile relationship. In decline since as far back as Edward could remember. Now, at twelve-years-old, he wasn’t surprised when his father ignored him, this time choosing his poker buddies over his son’s latest misfortune. Just more of the same.Thick and unmoving air collected above the city as it did each evening in summer as the sun withdrew from the sky. It was a Chicago sun, disguised by a permanently fixed haze, disappearing quickly for there was no horizon to delay its retreat. As the sun departed, twilight amplified the haze ...

27 likes 10 comments 10

Read story

Introducing Prompted, a new magazine written by you!

🏆 Featuring 12 prize-winning stories from our community. Download it now for FREE.

Download

✍️ All stories

“In tales of love and war” by Ilia Achourioti

Submitted to Contest #279

In the endless strings of destiny wars become stories whispered in the dark. Heroes become legends and history in her cruel glorious workings decides who will be remembered. It is in those strings that I tripped as if by mistake as if by a change in the winds. A pawn to a game of the gods many would say. And how could I ever hope to understand such matters so much bigger than me, than any mortal’s life. My destiny, if I had one, was not a thing of wonders. No glorious act that would change the course of history, that would make the waves hal...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“A Quest for Control ” by Willow Campbell

Submitted to Contest #279

“Come on Zaz, pleeeease, I just need a little!!” Quinn begged, fidgeting with the pearl charm on the necklace her mother had given her. “Quinn, I told you I don't have it and even if I did I wouldn't give you any,” Zaz said calmly. “You have to have it! You have every spice, herb, fungi, and ingredient that has ever existed in the whole history of witchcraft!” Quinn shouted. Zaz gave one of her notorious looks. Quinn lowered her voice, “It’s just a small spell, I can handle it.” Zaz blew out a heavy sigh and leaned against the cash register....

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“The Quiet Island” by Sarah Womack

Submitted to Contest #279

The Quiet IslandTrigger Warning: Mild gore, references to death, olives. When Flo heard the car approaching, she darted off the road and crouched low behind an olive tree. She didn’t dare move. At thirteen, she knew how dangerous it was to be out here alone. The car rattled past, the sound fading in the distance, leaving only the hum of crickets. As she stood up, the ground beneath her tilted, like the deck of a sinking ship, and she had to clutch the tree for balance. Another dizzy spell. They’d been hitting her all morning. She...

8 likes 0 comments 0

Read story

“Eyes Like Hers” by Lindsay Marshall

Submitted to Contest #279

I’ve heard it said that we are born looking for someone looking for us. Makes sense, right? It’s usually, at the very least, our mother who is looking for us, waiting to see who was growing inside of her all of those months. From that moment of birth on, our eyes are always searching the earth, the horizon, looking for someone who is looking for us. That was certainly true of me. I was born looking for someone looking for me. I must have known from inside the womb that my mother didn’t want me. Can an unbor...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“You've Got Time” by Aster Lee

Submitted to Contest #279

“You’ve got time”“Don’t stress”“You’ll figure it out”“The right thing will find you eventually” What a load of shit.  What if I don't have time, and I am stressed, and I can't figure it out? What if the right thing can’t find me because I’m too far down a sink hole for it to hear me screaming its name? What then? I'm truly unsure what I have done to give these people such misplaced, blind faith in me and the trajectory of my future. I feel too young to be out of time. Then again, time has been ripped away from far more innocent and far...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“Running From The Carbon Toilet” by Natalie Wood

Submitted to Contest #279

RUNNING FROM THE CARBON TOILET As I rose from the boat, my head was pounding. I heard, "How did you get here?" Did someone send you?" I had no idea who or where I was. I immediately noticed how thin and pale everyone looked—I was much healthier than they were; I could feel my strength, and they looked emaciated. They wanted whatever I had; I was just unsure what that was.  A woman approached me; she said her name was Helen. She told me I was on the coast of Somerset, New Jersey. The water had traveled into Middletown, Monroe, and Hunter...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“When We Were Zombies” by Valerie Cutko

Submitted to Contest #279

The walk. The dead eyes. The hunger.The taste of brains.But now, years after all that, our victims walk the streets again, you see them wearing beanie hats or business suits or cute wide trousers from hip Scandinavian designers, some of them even pushing babies in strollers down Seventh Avenue. Kiefer and Beasley and me.The Night of the Living Dead, which we all saw, separately, when we were thirteen, started it. Beasley, now Sophie, said she already felt more zombie than human. Maybe our path was inevitable.We were dead, of c...

3 likes 0 comments 0

Read story

“Lola” by Amy Jean Kern

Submitted to Contest #279

(Warning: Mentions of suicide, mental health, and substance abuse) She was the most popular girl. On the streets.            A girl who could charm any man that strolled her way. A girl whom the other girls wished they could become. A girl with luscious brown hair and quick feet. A hip-hop R&B artist who loved rap more than anything else in the world. She was a girl on the top of her game, waiting for her big break. Everywhere she walked in her Brooklyn neighborhood, all the resident...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“Paper Snowflakes” by VJ Hamilton

Submitted to Contest #279

Faelyn dug the blade of her chisel into the wood, one chip at a time. Her brother, Sammy, sat on a crate beside her, snipping at a folded paper. In the bunker around them, the shelves were so laden with supplies they curved under the weight. Canned foods, hardware goods, and metal replacement parts jostled for space with tins of biscuits and sacks of beans. The contents of an average-sized house had been shaken out and crammed into a space one-tenth the size. Uggggh, she was sick of that room.Bits of wood and paper drifted onto the scuffed c...

8 likes 6 comments 6

Read story

“My friend, Cleo” by Maria Calderon Zavala

Submitted to Contest #279

Trigger Warning: this story contains sensitive content, including the loss of a friend, grieving, and issues of mental health.She often thought about her tomorrow. She daydreamed about the climbs she would conquer and the happiness she would earn. Her spirit and mind were much younger than her actual years. I guess you could understand why many were envious of her without wanting to accept it. Everyone desires to be younger once we realize the time we have wasted. Funnily enough, when we are little, we just want time to pass through faster t...

3 likes 0 comments 0

Read story

“Alone in this World” by Lucy Showgren

Submitted to Contest #279

Introduction My name is Suzie. And my life is pretty simple. I wake up at 5:00, do my makeup, do my hair, sometimes take a shower, get dressed, brush my teeth. You know. Normal 16 year old girl behavior. I'm also not really scared of anything. Well, except for my biggest phobia of all. It's going to sound silly, but let's just get it over with. I'm terrified of being alone. Not like being alone in my third story room, but much worse than that. Not having anyone. That's the kind of alone I'm talking about. No family, no friends, no people to ...

1 like 0 comments 0

Read story

“True North” by Manning Bridges

Submitted to Contest #279

My office exemplifies order. Labeled shelves march along three walls. Their contents arranged by period, region, significance. Every artifact preserves its story in its assigned place—all except one. My hand glides across the empty space on the desk where my father's compass should rest in its worn leather case. Its absence throbs like a missing tooth.  The compass survived three wars. My father's fieldwork. My childhood. Then thirty years of my own academic life and archeological digs. Dad taught me how to read that compass on a dig. H...

8 likes 3 comments 3

Read story

“"Pink Flamingos" #ReedsyUnknown” by Tucker Sloan

Submitted to Contest #279

Pink Flamingos Kim was natural at schmoozing to get what she wanted. It was fun to watch. Male customers would come into our candy store. A store full of temptations. “Would you like to try our new black licorice wheels? They’re bitter, sweet, and fun to eat! You look like someone who likes things that have a bite.” She would say as she slowly, and sensually put on plastic, loose-fitting gloves. “You can carefully unwind the licorice wheels and eat them as licorice ropes if it’s easier on your teeth. It’s a relaxing part of my nigh...

1 like 1 comment 1

Read story

“All the Ways We Learn” by A.R. Eakle

Submitted to Contest #279

Maggie stomped to her son’s room, opened the door with a hard movement, and hollered at him, “What’s this I’m hearing ‘bout you trying to show all these girls the town? I didn’t raise no mut to whore ‘round the streets, Jameson Daniel. I don’t care what hormones you have raging through you right now, but, boy, I swear to the Jesus and Mother Mary, if I hear anything else ‘bout you rummaging through these girls’ drawers, I will skin your white ass red on the courthouse steps for the entire county to witness. You hear me, boy?”James was in the...

28 likes 24 comments 24

Read story

“Dogs and what not :)” by Priyanjali Bhattacharyya

Submitted to Contest #279

15 dogs stared at me like I was their next meal. Saliva dripped as they growled at me. Should I charge at them before they charged at me? Should I run? Should I let them have a go at me and drink up their blood?I didn’t know if drinking blood from a different species worked. Another question I had to ask of Jay.Nope I waited too long. I closed my eyes as they howled and just as they went for the kill, "Poppy! Here!" Someone shouted and I clutched at the vine that was attached to the pulley with a heavier weight on the other side. Just like t...

9 likes 2 comments 2

Read story