Best Fiction Lit Mags of 2024

25 Best Lit Mags of 2023 - Chill Subs Community Favorites

We want to find Flash with emotional resonance and characters we care about, who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. We’re searching for Flash that investigates the mysteries of being human, the sorrow and the joy of connecting to the diverse population around us.

We’re searching for Flash that investigates the mysteries of being human, the sorrow and the joy of connecting to the diverse population around us.

Fractured Lit publishes flash fiction with emotional resonance, with characters who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. 

We’re searching for flash that investigates the mysteries of being human; the sorrow and the joy of connecting to the diverse population.

Community Favorites: Our 2024 Best Lit Mag Awards winners for fiction, selected entirely by community vote. Over 500 magazines nominated with thousands of votes cast.

These magazines have a strong social presence and promote contributors. Here, your work will be amplified with high engagement rates, beautiful presentation, and growing follower counts.

Lit Mags for Social Media Exposure

Publications with stories in this respected annual flash fiction showcase. Perhaps the most prestigious flash-specific recognition.

Lit Mags in Wigleaf's Top 50

Basically what it says in the title. Our top most bookmarked fee-free lit mags that nominate for the Pushcart Prize.

Literary Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize (and Don’t Charge Fees)

Ultra-competitive magazines with one to two percent acceptance rates. They are competitive. They are choosy. But who doesn't love a challenge?

The 1% Club (Good Fuckin' Luck)

Double-dipping is for winners. High-quality magazines that welcome previously published work, giving great writing a second life.

Top Lit Mags That Accept Reprints

Community poll results. In an internet drowning in AI and advertising, your real recommendations are everything.

Where The Cool Kids Are Submitting Their Writing: Part 1

Those really cool poems and short stories you squirrel away in your Google Drive? Send them to these magazines that appreciate distinctive voices.

Where to Send Your Sexy, Weird, Tragically Relatable Writing

Not about prizes or prestige. Solely based on the writing community's nominations.

Story-focused publications with works chosen for Pushcart Prize anthologies. Less than 5% of nominated fiction typically makes the anthology.

Fiction Magazines Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

A targeted resource for short story placements with potential for Pushcart recognition.

Fiction Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Specialized publications that recognize exceptional brief fiction through Pushcart nominations.

The ultimate ranking of the world's liveliest indie literary magazines, curated by author and editor Charlie Fish. These are the passion projects; the kaleidoscopic cutting edge.

FISH List of Lively Indie Literary Magazines 2025

FISH List of Lively Indie Literary Magazines 2026

Publications with ultra-short stories under 400 words selected for this anthology series. The definitive collection for the microfiction form.

Lit Mags Featured in Best Microfiction Anthologies

Publications with narratives under 1,000 words selected for this anthology series. These journals consistently identify short-short fiction, exemplifying the artistry possible in compact narratives.

Lit Mags Featured in Best Small Fictions Anthologies

Publications with pieces chosen for Pushcart Prize anthologies. Recognition of exceptional quality across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Lit Mags Featured in Pushcart Prize Anthologies

Best Microfiction, edited by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke, celebrates the art of the extremely brief narrative. These publications have editorial teams with particular sensitivity to the craft.

Literary Magazines That Nominate for Best Microfiction

A comprehensive guide to journals that regularly nominate work for the Pushcart Prize.

Literary Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

These magazines have the fastest response times, so you won't be left hanging for months. No more endless waiting. Just, you know, regular waiting.

Literary Magazines with the Fastest Response Times

Explore the all-time most competitive fiction literary magazines. These magazines are revered in the fiction world for their editorial rigor.

Most Competitive Fiction-Only Literary Magazines of All Time

Explore the most competitive fiction literary magazines this year. These magazines are revered in the fiction world for their editorial rigor.

Most Competitive Fiction-Only Literary Magazines This Year

All-time most competitive literary magazines. Getting published in these is a significant achievement for any writer.

Most Competitive Literary Magazines of All Time

Uncover the most competitive literary magazines this year. These are the publications where getting published is a significant achievement for any writer.

Most Competitive Literary Magazines This Year

Check out the all-time most popular fiction literary magazines. These publications have a long-standing reputation for quality fiction.

Most Popular Fiction-Only Literary Magazines of All Time

Explore the most popular literary magazines of all time. These long-established publications are a staple in the literary world for writers of all genres.

Most Popular Literary Magazines of All Time

Explore the all-time most submitted-to fiction literary magazines. These outlets are the top destination for fiction writers worldwide.

Most Submitted-To Fiction-Only Literary Magazines of All Time

Explore the most submitted-to fiction literary magazines this year. These outlets are the top destination for fiction writers worldwide.

Most Submitted-To Fiction-Only Literary Magazines This Year

fractured literary

Fractured Lit publishes micro and flash fiction from writers of any background or experience. Both Micro and Flash categories are open year round and we do not charge any submission fees. We accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you inform us immediately and withdraw your work if your story is accepted elsewhere. We pay our authors $50 for original micro fiction and $75 for original flash fiction.
Micro fiction for Fractured Lit is 400 words or less.
Flash fiction is 401-1,000 words.
We will also consider previously published fiction, as long as the writer retains the rights or second-publication rights can be obtained. We do not pay for reprints.
Writers may submit up to two stories in the same document. Please wait 1 month after our initial reply before submitting again.
Cover letters are optional, but it's nice to know who is submitting to us. Please refrain from describing your stories. The work needs to speak for itself. Including the title and word count of each story is helpful for more efficient consideration of your work. Please include a brief third-person biography statement.
Please allow us up to two months to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. You will usually hear from us much sooner.
We consider submissions sent via Submittable. We are not open to email submissions and are not open to submissions sent via post.
Fractured Lit holds first serial publication rights for three months after publication. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following Fractured Lit’s first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of its publication in Fractured Lit first.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit.

Flash Fiction

Micro

Fractured Lit publishes micro and flash fiction from writers of any background or experience. Both Micro and Flash categories are open year round and we do not charge any submission fees. We accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you inform us immediately and withdraw your work if your story is accepted elsewhere. We pay our  $75 for original micro series.
Micro fiction series for Fractured Lit should include at least 3 micros of 400 words or less with a total word count of 1,600 or less words. All of the pieces must be unpublished in order to be considered for payment.
We will also consider previously published micro fiction series, as long as the writer retains the rights or second-publication rights can be obtained. We do not pay for reprints.
Writers may submit up to 1 micro series in the same document. Please wait 1 month after our initial reply before submitting again.
Cover letters are optional, but it's nice to know who is submitting to us. Please refrain from describing your stories. The work needs to speak for itself. Including the title and word count of each story is helpful for more efficient consideration of your work. Please include a brief third-person biography statement.
Please allow us up to two months to inform you if we have accepted your work for publication. You will usually hear from us much sooner.
We consider submissions sent via Submittable. We are not open to email submissions and are not open to submissions sent via post.
Fractured Lit holds first serial publication rights for three months after publication. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following Fractured Lit’s first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of its publication in Fractured Lit first.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit.

Micro Series

Fractured Lit would love the chance to help your formerly published stories reach a larger audience! We know how heartbreaking it can be to publish a story and then find out that the journal is no longer in existence. We also know that having a story placed in a print journal is exciting, but these stories often have smaller readerships. We're now accepting formerly published stories that if published online are at least 2 years old or from any time frame from those published in print. While we don't offer payment for reprinted stories, we can promise a larger reading audience and our full promotion of these stories through our website and through our social media channels! Come join the Fractured lit publishing family!

Reprints: Flash/Micro

Fractured Lit is looking for stories of ghosts, fables, and fractured fairy tales in 1,000 words or fewer. Whichever tradition you choose, make sure you find a new way to approach it, to twist and discombobulate it, to push us away from the mundane and into the strange or uncanny. Transport us from the here and now to a new land of discovery, where specific characters take on unique challenges inspired by these tropes. This contest produces some of the most imaginative submissions each year, and we look forward to reading your creations!

 Fractured Lit Ghost, Fable, and Fairy Tales Prize | $3500 | Judged by Melissa Llanes Brownlee

Sometimes we just need a prompt to free us from our fear of the blank page. That’s why we’re challenging writers to create new stories of up to 1,000 words based on the artwork of Edward Hopper. While Hopper is best known for his masterpiece, Nighthawks, we want writers to draw not only on the striking images and characters from any of his works, but also to be inspired by his use of light and dark, his sense of constructed tableaus, and his unnamed characters. We ask writers to interrupt these themes widely and at a slant, to develop stories that defy our sense of normalcy.
We want stories that play in the shadows, that aren’t afraid to show us the forgotten worlds, both real and imaginary. Take these scenes to new heights with precise language and unique characters. Create something amazingly weird and poignant. Flash fiction is all about augmenting the rules while still creating a sense of story and consequence, of velocity and depth, of something we won’t forget.
You're invited to submit to the Fractured Lit Ekphrastic Hopper Challenge from April 27 to May 10, 2026.
Here are some great places to get inspired by Hopper’s works:
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
The Walker Art Center
*Works by Hopper are not limited to the ones on these websites*
We're excited to offer the winner of this prize $500 and publication. All entries will be considered for publication at our regular rate of $75/$50, depending on length.
GUIDELINES:
The deadline for entry is May 10, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the challenge’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
Some Submittable Hot Tips:
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.

Fractured Lit Ekphrastic Hopper Challenge

We're excited to once again host the Fractured Lit Flash Fiction OPEN from May 11 to July 12, 2026.
No themes. No prompts. Just your wildest imaginations and your best, most engaging flash and microfiction! We want to showcase that story that took you minutes or hours or months to perfect. Portray those characters who will face their fears, who will act, who will get into trouble, and who will create tension on the page. Those are the characters we can’t stop wondering about. Play with format and structure, play with tropes and archetypes, and bring us something only you could create! Tell us the story we didn’t know we were yearning for!
We're thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Pamela Painter, who will choose one grand-prize winner and fifteen finalists from a shortlist of forty stories curated by our editors. The first-place winner will receive $2,000 and publication, while the fifteen finalists will receive $100 and publication. All entries will be considered for general publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections, and co-author of the textbook What If? Her stories have appeared in over a hundred journals and in the recent anthologies Flash Fiction America, Best Microfictions 2025, Best Small Fictions 2025, the Wigleaf Top 50, 2025, and most recently The Pushcart Book of Twenty-First Century Poetry and Prose. Painter has four Pushcart Prizes, and her work has been staged by Word Theatre in New York and LA. Painter is on the board of Ploughshares, and is a Founding Donor of the Flash Fiction Archive, established in 2020, at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin.
Here’s what Pamela Painter looks for in a flash fiction story:
GUIDELINES:
The deadline for entry is July 12, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest's close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
Some Submittable Hot Tips:
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.

Fractured Lit Flash Fiction OPEN | Prize $3500

We’re once again asking you to send us stories that play with setting, that reimagine our world, or take us into places we’ve never been! Play with the edge of genre, but make sure your character is still the star of your story.
From July 20 to September 20, 2026, we welcome submissions to the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize.
—Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere
For this contest, we want writers to be our tour guides through the unfamiliar, to engage their imaginations widely, and to write the stories that no bot or AI could write! We love unique, specific characters who are grounded in their story worlds, challenge the rules, and make dynamic choices!
For this prize, we are accepting micro and flash fiction, so we’re inviting submissions of stories from 100-1,000 words.
We're thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Gina Chung, who will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We're excited to offer the winner of this prize $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a B&N Discover Pick, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and longlisted for the New American Voices Award. She has received the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, two APALA Adult Fiction Honors, and a Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship. She is a faculty member of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University.
—Gina Chung, Guest Judge
GUIDELINES:
Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
Writers from historically marginalized groups may submit for free until we reach a cap of 25 submissions in this category. No additional fee waivers will be granted for this contest.
We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash/micro stories requires a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
Please send flash and microfiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
The deadline for entry is September 20, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest's close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
Some Submittable Hot Tips:
Please be sure to whitelist/add this address to your contacts, so notifications do not get filtered as spam/junk: notifications@email.submittable.com.
If you realize you sent the wrong version of your piece: It happens. Please DO NOT withdraw the piece and resubmit. Submittable collects a nonrefundable fee each time. Please DO message us from within the submission to request that we open the entry for editing, which will allow you to fix everything from typos in your cover letter to uploading a new draft. The only time we will not allow a change is if the piece is already under review by a reader.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.

Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize | Prize $3500

We welcome all of our submitters to return to the off-kilter in our second annual Fractured and Fused Prize, with submissions open from September 21, 2026, to November 22, 2026.
We want stories where things break, where characters get into trouble and make mistakes, and only a reckoning reveals their true natures. We want big stakes and small, conflicts that shake characters to their core. If it’s broken, find a narrative that fuses it back together; if it’s perfect, find the fissures and show us the cracks. We want to see opposites; we want tension to come from uneven power dynamics, with characters fighting for what they deserve, what they want, what they dream about, and what they’d do anything to have! Get messy with character, structure, language, and plot. Fractured and Fused, but for the better.
Guest Judge Richard Mirabella will choose three prize winners from a shortlist. We’re excited to offer the winner $3,000 and publication, while the second- and third-place winners will receive publication and $300 and $200, respectively. All entries will be considered for publication.
Richard Mirabella is the author of the novel Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in hex literary, Split Lip Magazine, Swamp Pink, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. His flash fiction has been listed twice on the wigleaf Top 50.
Here’s what Richard looks for in a flash fiction story:
GUIDELINES:
Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry—if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
We allow multiple submissions—each set of two flash stories should be submitted separately, accompanied by a reading fee.
Writers from historically marginalized groups will be able to submit for free until we reach our cap of twenty-five free submissions. No additional fee waivers will be granted.
Please send flash fiction only—1,000 word count maximum per story.
We only consider unpublished work for contests—we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
Simultaneous submissions are okay—please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
We do not require anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the guest judge.
AI-generated or -assisted submissions will be automatically disqualified.
The deadline for contest entry is November 22, 2026. We will announce the shortlist within twelve to fourteen weeks of the contest's close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
Some Submittable Hot Tips:
Please be sure to whitelist/add this address to your contacts, so notifications do not get filtered as spam/junk: notifications@email.submittable.com.
If you realize you sent the wrong version of your piece: It happens. Please DO NOT withdraw the piece and resubmit. Submittable collects a nonrefundable fee each time. Please DO message us from within the submission to request that we open the entry for editing, which will allow you to fix everything from typos in your cover letter to uploading a new draft. The only time we will not allow a change is if the piece is already under review by a reader.
OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your submission. We will provide a two-page global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.

fractured literary

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