A Damn Good Read - Best Lit Mags of 2025

Bold. Brief. Beautiful.
Fiction in fewer words.

First published in December 2007, Flash Fiction Online is a digital, professional magazine that celebrates brief, beautiful, and dynamic flash fiction—complete stories told in 500-1,000 words.  These bite-size stories are the perfect length for readers to enjoy during a lunch break, while waiting in line, or as a breather between daily tasks. And, because FFO publishes across the entire spectrum of speculative and literary genres, we are confident you will find something to love here.

Our recent issues offer five to eight works of flash fiction centered around a theme and written by authors from around the world. Stories are released over the course of each month, free for all readers—always on Fridays, sometimes Tuesdays as well. We also publish each issue in an ebook on the first of every month. To get early access to stories, you can purchase an issue from our shop, become a paid Patreon member, or subscribe at Weightless Books.

Flash Fiction Online (ISSN 1946-1712) is a publication of Alight Literary Press, a registered nonprofit with federal 501(c)(3) status (EIN 99-2929803).

Out of 4,357 votes, these lit mags came out on top in 2025 as the best lit mags for exceptional reading.

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Flash Fiction Online

Noir

Crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings
Having a bleak and darkly cynical quality of the kind associated with hard-boiled crime fiction and film noir
Paranormal

Not scientifically explainable, supernatural
“Isn’t Paranormal Noir just a subset of Urban Fantasy?”

It can be, but we’d love to see a new, fresh take on old themes. 

Vampires in space, doing crime? Sure! 
Far-future consciousness transfer-hauntings? Send them our way! 
Sad wizard investigates a murder in LA? Okay, sounds cool, submit that, but also what if he were on Mars instead?
A group of West Virginia moonshiners firebombing a haunted A.I. data center? Sign me up!
Get weird. Get crazy. Go nuts.

We’d love to see stories told from unique perspectives or points of view. Always wanted to write a piece in first person direct address? Send it. Second person? Send it. Fifth person POV? Invent it, but please make sure your story is intelligible to human eyes.

Paranormal Noir

We are looking for complete 500- to 1000-word stories with crisp prose, well-developed characters, compelling plots, and satisfying resolutions. We want stories that engage our minds and emotions. We publish across many genres, including speculative (science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and horror) and literary fiction.
TRANSLATIONS: We are looking for stories that were published in their original language, but have since been translated. Translations must be done by a human -- absolutely no AI translations. Both author and translator will receive the 2026 reprint rate of $36 upon publication. Both author and translator will be asked to sign the MOU for reprint stories. Either the author or the translator may submit, but must be able to provide information on behalf of both parties.
REPRINTS: Reprint and translation submissions must be free of the exclusivity period for the previous journal or publisher. We do not consider stories self-published on personal blogs, Substacks, or Patreon pages.
FORMATTING: Please format your submission in a double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman or similar font (prefer no Courier), with standard 1" margins and black font on an unadorned, white background. No PDF submissions.  No Images and no graphics.
ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONS: Reprints and translations do not need to be anonymous.
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: YES, we accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us and withdraw the story as soon as you learn that it has been accepted somewhere else.
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS: NO. We accept ONE story / per reading period.
AI-GENERATED SUBMISSIONS: NO. We are committed to publishing stories written and edited by humans. We reserve the right to reject any submission that we suspect to be primarily generated or created by language modeling software, Chat GPT, chat bots, or any other AI apps, bots, or software. We reserve the right to ban submissions from accounts, emails, or users who we believe or suspect have submitted AI-generated content.
QUERIES: You can check on the status of your submission at any time via your Submittable account. If, after 10 weeks, your submission is still marked as "in-progress" with no updates, you may email editor@flashfictiononline.com with QUERY in the subject line for an update on its status. *** We do not reply to submissions sent via this email. Those are deleted unread. ***

TRANSLATION SUBMISSION

We are looking for complete 500- to 1000-word stories with crisp prose, well-developed characters, compelling plots, and satisfying resolutions. We want stories that engage our minds and emotions. We publish across many genres, including speculative (science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and horror) and literary fiction.<div><br></div><div>REPRINTS: Reprint and translation submissions must be free of the exclusivity period for the previous journal or publisher. We do not consider stories self-published on personal blogs, Substacks, or Patreon pages.</div>

REPRINT Submission

We are looking for complete 500- to 1000-word stories with crisp prose, well-developed characters, compelling plots, and satisfying resolutions. We want stories that engage our minds and emotions.
We publish across many genres, including speculative (science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and horror) and literary fiction.
SUBMISSION CAP: We are limited to 1,000 free submissions. We expect to reach that number before the end of the month, so please plan to submit early.
FORMATTING: Please format your submission in a double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman or similar font (we prefer not to read in Courier), with standard 1" margins and black font on an unadorned, white background. No PDF submissions.  No Images and no graphics.
ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONS: Do not include your name, address, email, or other identifying information on your manuscript (header, byline, file name, etc).
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: Yes, we accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us and withdraw the story as soon as you learn that it has been accepted somewhere else.
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS: No. One story per author per call.
RESUBMISSIONS: If you have a story that has been rejected by Flash Fiction Online, please do not resubmit unless an edited version has been requested by the editorial team.
REPRINTS: Not for this call.
AI-GENERATED SUBMISSIONS: NO! We are committed to publishing stories written and edited by humans. We reserve the right to reject any submission that we suspect to be primarily generated or created by language modeling software, Chat GPT, chat bots, or any other AI apps, bots, or software.
QUERIES: You can check on the status of your submission at any time via your Submittable account. If, after 10 weeks, your submission is still marked as "in-progress," you may email editor@flashfictiononline.com with QUERY in the subject line for an update on its status. (Submissions sent to this address will be deleted unread.)
COMPENSATION: Our 2026 rate is $100 for each original story.
We are unable to provide personal feedback or critiques.
We will NOT consider stories that promote or affirm hatred, prejudice, or violence toward any group of people based on age, race, nationality, religion, sex, gender, political affiliation, disability, neurodiversity, or other social identity.

General Submissions

Flash Fiction Online is seeking submissions for an issue exploring the theme of Aftermath, scheduled for January 2027. The guest editor for this issue is Lark Morgan Lu.
Oftentimes, stories are declared completed upon the resolution of their largest event. The dragon has been slain. The murderer has been brought to justice. A peace agreement has ended the war. A domestic violence survivor successfully and permanently escapes. This call is intended to ask: what happens after that? How do you rebuild– what does rebuilding even look like?
The average natural disaster is perhaps worth a few weeks of media coverage and yet it takes years, sometimes over a decade, for a community to recover. The journey to heal the invisible scars of great loss and harm can span generations. In cases of war there may never be something that could be described as a recovery. This issue will explore narratives where sustained survival and eventual thriving is a brave and subversive act. Stories where the big “thing”, whatever it may be, has already happened. Perhaps it happened last week. Maybe it happened years ago. And sometimes, the thing can happen so long ago that no one alive knows what it precisely was.
This issue is also especially interested in submissions from authors who have been affected (interpreted broadly) by forced migration due to natural disaster, climate change, colonialism, and genocide. Their submissions are not expected to cover the specific event(s) that impacted them.
Some media related to the concept of aftermath:
We Are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist by Vida Cruz
STET by Sarah Gailey
A Recipe for the Day Alban Kills the King by M.R. Robinson
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters
Das Brot by Wolfgang Borchert and other trümmerliteratur (“rubble literature”) from post WWII Germany
Lily, the Immortal by Kylie Lee Baker
1000xRESIST
Disco Elysium
We would consider the following a hard sell:
Post-hoc justifications of real world conflict
Narratives leading up to or ending on another revolution or big event
Vignettes (inactive protagonists are not necessarily vignette pieces)
Callous "-cides"
Narratives centered exclusively on traumatic events
All stories submitted through this page must fit the theme! If you have a story that doesn’t fit this theme, please submit during one of our regular submission calls.
WORD COUNT: 500-1,000 words. Because we are focused on flash fiction, this word count is firm.
SCHEDULE:
This call will be open from July 1-31, 2026.
FFO reviews stories in two stages – a slush stage and a winnowing stage. In the slush round, first readers vote on stories to be passed forward. These top-tier stories are reviewed once a month in our Winnowing round. Final decisions on these second-round stories are generally made within 12 weeks from the date of submission.
Ebook release date: January 1, 2027
Each story then has its own release day on our website within the month of January.
ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONS: YES. Do not include your name, address, email, or other identifying information on your manuscript (header, byline, file name, etc). This allows our First Readers to evaluate your story based on the work alone.
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS – YES
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS – NO, one story per author for this call
REPRINTS – NO, we have a separate call for that
FFO's AI POLICY: NO. We are committed to publishing stories written and edited by humans. We reserve the right to reject any submission that we suspect to be primarily generated or created by language modeling software, Chat GPT, chat bots, or any other AI apps, bots, or software. We reserve the right to ban submissions from accounts, emails, or users who we believe or suspect have submitted AI-generated content.
PAYMENT & RIGHTS FOR ORIGINAL FICTION: For original (previously unpublished) fiction, Flash Fiction Online pays $100 per story for first electronic rights, with six months exclusivity, as well as a non-exclusive one-time right to publish the stories in an anthology. The author retains all other rights. Original stories must not have been previously published anywhere, including a blog or on Patreon. Payment is made via PayPal (preferred) or mailed as a check.

SPECIAL CALL -- "Aftermath"

Flash Fiction Online is seeking submissions for an issue of speculative fiction themed "Human Shaped." The guest editor for this issue is author and editor Ashlee Lhamon. Selected pieces will be published in our March 2027 issue.
With the recent dramatic leaps in artificial intelligence, the question of what makes us human has never felt more pressing, complex, and relevant. For this call, we're asking for the inverse, stories about what is only "human shaped."
This is not a call for stories about AI. We want you to think more broadly—from recognizable human-shaped creatures like vampires and zombies, to shapeshifting aliens and doppelgangers to, yes, robots, and beyond. Think the imposter, the thing that has slipped on a human skin, or the person who started out human but has become something else—for better or worse. We're looking for unique and creative takes that incorporate a strong speculative element, whether it be fantasy or scifi.
Here are some human-shaped stories that we've loved:
The Man in the Black Suit by Stephen King
Pearlescent Tickwad by Samir Sirk Morató
St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test by Mary Berman
Hemorrhage by Cyrus Amelia Fisher
BigHappyFriend Likes Humans by Rodrigo Culagovski
As a reminder, Flash Fiction Online does not take stories that are AI-generated or -assisted in any way. The theme of this call is not an invitation to violate this rule. Any story suspected of being AI-generated or -assisted will be rejected.
All stories submitted through this page must fit the theme. If you have a story that doesn’t fit this theme, please submit during one of our general submission calls (the next one will be in October 2026).
WORD COUNT: 500-1,000 words. Because we are focused on flash fiction, this word count is firm.
GENRE: All speculative fiction genres are welcome, including fantasy, sci-fi, horror, slipstream, and magical realism. Humor is also welcome, but should incorporate a speculative element.
SCHEDULE: This call will be open from September 1-30, or until we reach 1,000 submissions (our cap in Submittable).
FFO reviews stories in two stages—a slush stage and a winnowing stage. In the slush round, first readers vote on stories to be passed forward. These top-tier stories are reviewed by the guest editor. The process generally takes about two months.
Ebook release date: March 1, 2027.
Each story then has its own release day on our website within the month of March.
ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONS: Do not include your name, address, email, or other identifying information on your manuscript (header, byline, file name, etc). This allows our First Readers to evaluate your story based on the work alone.
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS – YES
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS – NO, one story per author for this call.
REPRINTS – NO, not for this call.
RESUBMISSIONS – NO, please do not send stories that have been previously rejected by FFO.
PAYMENT & RIGHTS FOR ORIGINAL FICTION: For original (previously unpublished) fiction, Flash Fiction Online pays $100 per story for first electronic rights, with six months exclusivity, as well as a non-exclusive one-time right to publish the stories in an anthology. The author retains all other rights. Original stories must not have been previously published anywhere, including a blog or on Patreon. Payment is made via PayPal (preferred) or mailed as a check.

Flash Fiction Online

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SPECIAL CALL -- "Human Shaped"

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