Logo for Sydney Marie Books featuring a graphic of stacked and upright books on a dark blue background.

Publications

Sydney M. Crago is the author of short stories and poetry. Her work has been accepted by literary journals and published online and in print.

Her first collection was published in 2024 titled, Musings: Poems and Tiny Tales. The collection is available for purchase online.

Stay up to date on Sydney’s writing journey by subscribing to her weekly newsletter and following her on Instagram.

Book cover titled 'Musings: Poems and Tiny Tales' by Sydney M. Crago, featuring a symmetrical floral design with yellow and navy blue flowers and leaves.

Musings

Poems And Tiny Tales

Have you ever stared at a painting and wished it could talk to you? Have you ever wanted to give someone a tour of your brain? Have you ever watched the stars in the sky until you lost track of time? In her debut collection, the author welcomes you into her thoughts and life. Through these poems and short stories, she offers a chance to explore love, art, myth, and nature.

Read Sydney’s Stories

Seniors Get STDs too!

Published by Bare Knuckles Press

There’s a billboard I pass every day on my way to work at a job I don’t want to go to in the first place. But I do, and I’m driving, and then I see it, rising from the morning fog, standing guard over the highway like a troll we must pay a toll of awe and attention to each morning. In the seven months I’ve been making this commute to the office, or I like to call it, “the freezer,” where I type on a keyboard with fingernails turning blue, where I hold my coffee cup to my cheek just to remember what it feels like to be warm, it has never changed…

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On My

Recommendation

Published on Reedsy

The phone on the desk rang again.

“Annabeth?” Lindsey called over her shoulder, “can you get that?”

The phone’s ringer was interrupted mind tone as the library’s assistant lifted the dated receiver from its cradle, stretching the tangled spirals of its cord as she pressed it to the side of her face. Lindsey dragged her finger along the spines of the books marking her progress as she scanned the white, laminated labels for “GRE”…

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Banana Bread

Published By Bridge

Marvin could smell vanilla and cinnamon wafting into the garage as he slid his left foot out of his leather, rubber-soled work shoes. She baked, he thought. He slipped his right foot free from its shoe. He tucked his boots into their spot on the metal shelving, shelving that had occupied the same place in the garage since the day they moved in some thirty some years ago…

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New Neighbors

Published on Writing Battle

The headstone above his body had the wrong name and no death date. As a stickler for accuracy and a devotee to numbers, he should have been, as they say, rolling in his grave. But it wasn’t his grave; that was precisely the problem, that and that the dead don’t actually roll…

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We Regret to Inform you

Published on Reedsy

Dear Miss Prescott,

Thank you for attending our casting call for the Marquee Theater’s upcoming amateur production of “West Side Story.” The audition process has been completed at this time.

We regret to inform you that…

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Five Stars

Published on Reedsy

The woman closed the door of the black sedan and slung the leather purse off of her shoulder and onto her lap. 

The engine hummed as the driver moved the gear shift from park to drive. The automatic locks clicked as the wheels of the car inched away from the curb and entered into the flow of traffic. The eyes in the rearview mirror glanced back to her. “107 Pine Street, right?” He asked.

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Sold: Yellow House on Cooper Hill

Published By The Write Launch

I saw the house in person for the first time during a January thaw. It was the kind that taunts the world with the hope of spring by covering the grass with a single layer of bubbled ice, attempting to hide the hint of green below a layer of frosted glass. The house shone like a pocket of sunshine in cold and gray and ice, offering a haven from winter and the feelings of despair that so often comes with living…

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The Painting in Gallery 26

Published By Brainchild

Watch the boy trailing his school group. Watch the distance between him and the canvas. The teacher told him to be careful, so he is careful not to touch anything. The other children keep their hands in their pockets.

A tourist stands behind the boy, camera strapped around her neck, its sides crushed by her hands. Her pudgy finger presses the shutter. The flash catches the fine ridges left by brush strokes some hundred years ago…

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