Vestal Review now publishes its print issues twice a year in a perfect-bound edition. Some of the content is available on the Web. We have increased the number of published flashes to 24 a year. We welcome your subscriptions if you want to read them all.

One year subscription is $20 postpaid (add $6 for postage for foreign subscription). A sample copy is $10 (add $2 for postage, $4 for foreign address).

The reading for the new issue 35 begins July 1 and ends November 30, 2008. There is no theme.

Because of the great number of submissions, we are accepting only two submissions per author in a reading period. Our new reading periods are:

 1. January-May
 2. July-November
 

We would regretfully delete any submissions after the initial two. All stories submitted during June and December will be returned unread.

All submissions should be sent electronically to the address listed below. We do not accept any other forms of submissions.

Send to this address.

If you want to control spam, please approve our submission address beforehand. We will not go through the approval process for you.

Vestal Review accepts only original material. No reprints, please. Even if it has been displayed on your own Web page, we consider it published. Yet if John Updike sends his previously published story, who are we to say no?

If the story has been posted and reviewed at a password-protected e-workshop with a controlled list of participants, we consider this a plus.

Vestal Review is a magazine for flash (short-shorts) fiction.   We realize that there are different definitions of what a flash story is and all of them have merit. In our definition, a flash story is no longer than 500 words and it has a plot. If it's longer than 500 words and/or has no plot, we are not interested. We are also not interested in porn, racial slurs, excessive gore, or obscenity. On the other end of the spectrum, no children's or preachy stories either, please. Our target audience is people over 18, so R-rated content is OK, but not X-rated. Most genres, other than children's, syrupy romance or hard science fiction, are accepted, and we love humor.

Don't forget that the title is an important part of the story. Make it pertinent but don't tell too much. We generally don't favor one-word titles.

The cash payments:

Stories up to 100 words (excluding the title)--10 cents a    word.
Stories between 101 and 200 words--5 cents a word.
Stories between 201 and 500 words--3 cents a word.
Stories of great merit receive up to $25 flat fee; 3 cents a word is a minimum pay in any case.

In addition, every contributor will get one free copy.

Foreign writers will be paid via PayPal.

In exchange for these fees, we ask for first North American serial rights and First Electronic Rights. In addition, we ask for no posting of the accepted story anywhere on the Web, or in print in the United States or Canada, for 30 days after its exclusive appearance on the Vestal Review Web site.  After this period, all rights revert back to the writer but we ask that you acknowledge Vestal Review in any subsequent printing of the material published here, be that on the Web or in hard copy. We are also asking for one year archiving rights and anthology rights. Anthology rights are secondary, meaning that the author may sell his or her story to any other anthology market providing that 30 days passed after the Vestal Review publication.

If your story is accepted for publication, you will be expected to sign the following contract. Please don't send a contract before your story is accepted.

Being writers, we understand the frustration of waiting for months and months for an editor's reply. Our target is to reply within three months, and we do allow simultaneous submissions. Please inform us immediately if your story is accepted elsewhere. If your story is accepted for Vestal Review, please withdraw it from other markets immediately. We usually do not keep a submission on file after the reading period is over, so if you do not get an acceptance letter prior to the publication on an issue, your story probably has been rejected.

Multiple submissions are OK but please limit them to two per reading period (the time between two consecutive issues). Each multiple has to be submitted in a separate e-mail. As stated above, we will only take two submissions per author for each reading  period. All submissions should be send electronically to this address:

  address.

We do not accept US Mail (snail-mail) submissions. Those will be discarded or returned. Snail-mail submission without SASE will be discarded.

The submissions should be saved as a PLAIN TEXT file and pasted into the body of your e-mail. Please make sure that you do not have curly quotes in your pasted file. No attachments of any kind, please. This means no HTML either. Please indicate italics with asterisks (*). Write single-spaced, don't indent paragraphs and do insert a blank line between paragraphs.

Because of spam, please have the subject line of your e-mail begin with the words "query" or "submission." No quotes. Otherwise, we may not receive your correspondence.

For all submissions, the word "Submission" has to be the first one in the subject, followed by a colon and the title of your story. Please indicate the word count.

We will not consider any submissions above 500 words.

These guidelines are created to make the editors' lives easier and our replies faster. If you won't follow them, we will have to return your submission unread!

A cover letter is great. Please enclose a 2-3 line third-person bio. We would like to know whom we are dealing with. Don't forget your legal name and the postal address so we can mail you the check. We will not consider an anonymous submission.

So, please send us your best and let's work together.

The Editors