Where to Submit Your Flash Fiction

Flash fiction digs down to the essence. It gives the reader a bite-sized taste of a world beyond their own. That bite might be as large as 2000 words or as small as 500. The key is the illumination. The journals (and contest) on this list cover a range of genres and topics, but all of them celebrate the small, none of them charge reading fees, and all are open to submissions right now! Poets and essayists: check out this list, too!

Note: We are a creative writing school and compile these lists for the benefit of our students. We’re happy to answer questions about our courses but please don’t send us your publishing queries or submissions :). Instead, click on the green links to go to the publication’s website and look for their submissions page. For more great places to submit as well as our best tips on getting published, check out our other lists and resources.

If you have a work of 500 words or fewer, submit it to the Books Ireland autumn Flash Fiction competition! This competition is open for submissions until the 28th of October and the final 10 selected stories will be published in Books Ireland. Work can cover any theme but must be previously unpublished and not contain any inflammatory or damaging material. Entry is free.

Fictive Dream accepts flash fiction submissions throughout the year and publishes primarily literary work. They publish one story at a time, twice a week, and want “stories with a contemporary feel that give an insight into the human condition,” between 500 and 2500 words.

Flash Frog is open to flash fiction submissions year-round. According to their editors, “We like our stories like we like our dart frogs: small, brightly colored, and deadly to the touch.” They have a 1,000-word maximum word count (no minimum), and authors receive $25 per story upon publication.

Space Squid is a great place for up-and-coming speculative fiction writers to share their work! They are looking for fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories between 750 and 2,000 words that, in their words, “aren’t boring.” Submissions are open until the 31st of October. Contributors receive a $5 honorarium and a Space Squid t-shirt to show off your Space Squid-ness.

FEED lit mag accepts and publishes stories on a rolling basis, meaning like most of the flash fiction publishers here, they are open year-round. They are looking for “that spoonful of a story or morsel-length poem to fill us up and leave us craving seconds,” and will read up to three poetry and prose pieces at a time, each under 750 words.

Tip: for some great tips on how to write great flash fiction from someone who knows, check out this blog post from Smokelong Quarterly. For even more venues looking for flash work, check out this list from 2017.

Author: Beka Bevans