Inkhorn Review: Micro Fiction Gold Star Program Gold Star Fee: usd $4.00

We're after stories that do their whole job in a few hundred words — a voice that sounds like a person, a turn that lands, and no line explaining what the reader should have felt. Very short work has nowhere to hide, which is the point.

A piece isn't considered micro fiction just because it's short. We consider micros a form of their own, somewhere between a poem and prose.

Up to three micros in a single document, none longer than 300 words.

Reading fees help us pay our contributors. If the reading fee presents a challenge for you, please watch for our quarterly free-submission calls.

Send one micro submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our Patreon program offers perks that may interest you.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere. Withdraw here as soon as a piece is placed.

We don't accept it.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one the Authors Guild draws in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been longer than 60 days, please query.

Inkhorn Review pays $25 per accepted micro, sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.