Flash Fiction Online is seeking submissions for an issue of family-centered speculative fiction, scheduled for November 2025. The guest editor for this issue is author and FFO assistant editor, Emma Burnett.

What We're Looking For

Speculative fiction is so often outward looking—the big narrative, saving the world/galaxy/universe, the however-many-rings and so much power. For this special call, we are asking you to break from big-picture thinking, to casually incorporate the science and technology, to embrace the day-to-day life of else-when. Tell us about the families who live in those alternative spaces.

How do you make sure kids eat their greens when it’s all just buttons on a replicator? How does education work for faeries who can just fly off in a grump? How do you sew patches onto your friends’ clothes after the techbros stole all the metal off the planet? How do you keep your partner powered after the apocalypse?

What is family? It’s whatever you want it to be. Nuclear, poly, assembled, blended, reconstituted, child-free, feline, robo-archal. However your people inhabit your sci-fi or fantasy world, tell us about them.

What is punk? It’s generally associated with anti-establishment views. In this case, anti-big picture thinking. Go small and stay home. 

While we are interpreting speculative fiction broadly, we’d recommend steering clear of horror unless you can keep it soft. There’s a lot of parenting horror out there, and while we know it’s important to scream into the void, it’s not really what we’re looking for this time. We want to create a space for hope, sympathy, joy, and gentle humor. Make us love the family in your mind. Show us the families we would want to be part of in these other worlds.

Stories that we feel are close to what we're looking for include:

• “Italic & Bold" by Dan Peacock
• “Yaka Mein Lady” by Vivian Chou
• “Breakup, breakdown, breakfast” by Emma Burnett
• “The long way to a small, angry planet” by Becky Chambers (yeah, it’s a novel, but the idea is there)

There are some things we’re just not interested for this issue:

• Grief stories—as in, recovering from grief is not driving the plot / conflict
• Vignettes (it has to be a complete story)
• Callous "-cides"
• Cannibalism, gore, splatter-anything
• Abuse or violence, because you can’t think of another way to create family drama

All stories submitted through this page must fit the theme! If you have a story that doesn’t fit this theme, please submit during one of our regular submission calls.

WORD COUNT: 500-1,000 words. Because we are focused on flash fiction, this word count is firm.

SCHEDULE: 

This call will be open from May 1-31, 2025.

FFO reviews stories in two stages – a slush stage and a winnowing stage. In the slush round, first readers vote on stories to be passed forward. These top-tier stories are reviewed once a month in our Winnowing round. Final decisions on these second-round stories are generally made within 12 weeks from the date of submission.

Ebook release date: November 1, 2025

Each story then has its own release day on our website within the month of November.

ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONS: YES. Do not include your name, address, email, or other identifying information on your manuscript (header, byline, file name, etc). This allows our First Readers to evaluate your story based on the work alone.

SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS – YES

MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS – NO, one story per author for this call

REPRINTS – NO, we have a separate call for that

PAYMENT & RIGHTS FOR ORIGINAL FICTION: For original (previously unpublished) fiction, Flash Fiction Online pays $100 per story for first electronic rights, with six months exclusivity, as well as a non-exclusive one-time right to publish the stories in an anthology. The author retains all other rights. Original stories must not have been previously published anywhere, including a blog or on Patreon. Payment is made via PayPal (preferred) or mailed as a check.