Short(b)Reads Anthology
Ever read something that made you hungry? Ever had an author so skilled at sensory description make you crave the food in their story?
We want to make an anthology out of that feeling. Send us your stories that feature food. The food doesn’t need to be central to the plot, however, the sensory description of the food needs to stand out for us. We want our readers hungry, both for the rest of your story and for the food it contains. Wow us with your culinary plot points.
All stories must feature a speculative element, whether it’s magic or monsters or anything in between. All subgenres of speculative fiction are welcome, although military/political/alien-based sci-fi will be a harder sell. We will judge all stories by their own merits though, so if you think you have something that fits, we want to read it.
All food featured in your story must be appetizing and must be something that can be made in the real world. We want speculative fiction, but not speculative food.
All stories must be previously unpublished (this includes your own website/blog).
We will not accept any stories featuring bigotry, hateful language, or sexual assault of any kind. This is an anthology for adults so some sex/violence/profanity is fine, as long as it directly pertains to the story and isn’t used solely for shock value. We do want our mothers to read this, so any sex should be fade-to-black rather than overly descriptive. We also will not accept any AI-generated stories.
Guidelines:
Deadline: January 10th, 2025 at 11:59 EST
Word count: 2,500-7,000 words
Payment: Flat payment of $30 USD per accepted story, paid through PayPal or Venmo.
Rights: First world print and digital publication rights with one year exclusivity following the date of publication. Authors will retain the rights to their stories, and will be asked to sign contracts prior to publication.
Simultaneous Submissions: We do accept simultaneous submissions: after all, life is short. We just ask that you please withdraw your story by emailing us immediately if it’s accepted somewhere else prior to our decision.
Multiple Submissions: No
Reprints: No
General tips: We will not accept re-submissions and we cannot guarantee feedback on any rejected submissions. Please, no poetry. We will not accept anything outside our word count range, no matter how perfectly suited you think it may be. Anything sent following the close of our submission window will be deleted unread. Craft is important to us, and while we don’t expect perfection, we do expect pieces to be polished. Please don’t send us a first draft.
How to submit: Please send all stories as .doc or .docx attachments to [email protected] with your story title and your last name in the subject line. Do not paste the story into the body of the email. We ask that you include a brief third-person bio in your email, but we do not need (or want) a synopsis in your email. The story will speak for itself. Please, for the sake of our eyeballs, double space and use 12pt font. We also strongly suggest you use Shunn’s Manuscript Format.