About

Vestal Review. Don't flash without it.

The Vestal Review is an awesome literary journal, one that does the work of angels when it comes to short short fiction. A national treasure. Find it. Read it. Now.

Steve Almond

Vestal Review is the oldest magazine dedicated exclusively to flash fiction. It has been published continuously since March 2000. Vestal Review is a semi-annual perfect-bound print magazine with a Web presence, devoted to what we consider an underrepresented type of fiction: flash (or short-short) stories. A good flash, replete with a cohesive plot, rich language and enticing imagery, is perhaps the hardest type of fiction to write. A good flash is so condensed that it borderlines poetry. A good flash engages your mind not only for the short duration of its read, but for a long time after.

Vestal Review is an eclectic magazine, open to all genres except children's stories and hard science fiction. We are blessed with a deluge of submissions and therefore are very selective. Our contributors include Steve Almond, Katharine Weber, Mike Resnick, Aimee Bender, Sam Lipsyte, Kirk Nesset, Judith Cofer, Bruce Boston, Robert Boswell, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michelle Richmond, Liz Rosenberg, Stuart Dybek, Robert Olen Butler and Pamela Painter. We are an official Pushcart-nominating press. Our stories have been reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Minuscule Fiction, Flash Writing, E2Ink anthologies, and have been printed in the WW Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward. Vestal Review was featured on NPR in 2004, and is a recipient of the Broome Council of the Arts grant. We pay professional rates of 3 - 10 cents a word plus a contributor's copy.