971 MENU


971 MENU publishes stories of 971 words or fewer because we are interested in very short stories, but 971 is a purely arbitrary number. It is in the neighborhood of 1000, but it is not 1000 -- this distinguishes the magazine. Also, 971 MENU resembles a telephone number, and this constitutes a dash of character. There is no special reason why 971 was chosen instead of some other number -- it just was. 971 words is very short, and we are interested in very short stories because they don’t take long to read, but we don’t believe that the very short story is a distinct form. A very short story is a short story. 'Flash fiction' is a catchy label that came from the title of an anthology of short fiction that happened to be very short. No fundamental changes occur, however, as a story’s length approaches zero -- there has never been a predetermined lower limit to the length of a short story. A story needs to be as long as it needs to be. As for what a story needs to do, this is probably the shortest way to say it: worry the reader; satisfy the reader. This is crucial to writing successful fiction, and none of it is any less true for very short stories (or flash fictions, or whatever we’re pleased to call them). A story is a story is a story. Our only mission is to publish good things. We publish very short stories, but like any successful story, a very short one invites re-reading. It delights the reader, and the reader loves it.