Charlie M. Case is a fiction author from Southern California, currently based in New England. Case has been published in a range of literary journals including Long River Review, Major 7th Magazine, and Sublunary Review, with work forthcoming in 2026 from Reed Magazine and The Masters Review. Case holds a B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut and has received awards in fiction and poetry. Though Case's work spans multiple genres, it is short fiction that has always been home.

In short: I write for the sake of the craft; I identify as "a writer" before any name.

To be lengthy: I am a short fiction writer first, then a writer of other types of fiction, then, incidentally, a poet. My work generally settles in the literary and speculative realms, and likes to explore selfhood and how the self ricochets against the world. It is my intention as a writer to always be innovating: to chew on the craft, thread it, unfurl it; to always evolve my use of diction and cadence. The form and delivery of a piece matters as much to me as the story itself.

Coming to the story itself, almost all of my work is character-driven. I am interested in the complexity, and often contradiction, of the emotional arc; I am always looking for new angles from which to portray grief, longing, loyalty and simple bonds. Authenticity is something I want to evoke, in the sense that I'd like to avoid archetype, but I have zero interest in pretending my characters are real. The joy of them is that they aren't. A character is a vehicle for a narrative; a narrative is an evocation of a theme. It is my intention for my characters, my worlds, and the actual words I use to build them, to have a sense of shared interiority. They should be inseparable, cohere utterly.

I have read and written since before my memory. It is my greatest passion, an identity facet stronger than my name. It's true that I write for the sake of the craft first, but coherence is a good runner-up. When you strip away the craft, is a coherent message left? In writing, I am trying to speak. I can only do so this way: layered, obfuscated. But coherent. Do you hear me?

• 2025 The Masters Review Summer Short Story Award for New Writers, honorable mention, for "UNDELIVERANCES."
• 2023–2024 Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction, 1st prize, for "Newton Considers the Still Life."
• 2023–2024 Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize in poetry, winner, for "Aromantic’s Apotropaic."
• 2018 Taylor A. Greene High School Prose Contest, 1st place, for "You’re Prepared (For Nothing That Will Happen, and Everything That Might)"