What?
Short stories, 2k-8k words long (with the 3,000-5,500 range being our real sweet spot).
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When?
A new short story every two weeks, followed with interviews with the authors (and possibly other “bonus materials”) about the stories on those off weeks in0between.
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Who?
Founding Editor:
Aaron Burch
Aaron Burch is the author of an essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, and a novel, Year of the Buffalo, among others. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and HAD. He grew up in Tacoma, lives in metro Detroit, and is online lots of places, including (the not—updated-often-enough) aaronburch.net. His next book, TACOMA, is forthcoming from Autofocus Books.
The Team:
Jessica Dawn, Assistant Editor
Jessica Dawn reads your stories from a couch in the Bay Area with a failed farm dog curled up next to her. She does some writing, she takes some photos. She’s at @jessdawn@bsky.social if you want to say hey. Some of her favorite SSL stories are “Dipshits” by Kirsti MacKenzie and “The Legend of the Convenience Store Cashier” by Anna Vangela Jones.
Jim Cuene
Jim Cuene lives in Minnesota where he is working on his first collection of short stories when he is not racing his bike, making music or traveling somewhere. Among his favorite stories from Short Story Long are "Whippormorpha," "The Filmmaker" and "Wargames."
Christine Gainer
Christine Gainer is a recovering tech writer and certified copy editor in Chicago. She spends her time writing, playing cards with friends, and staring at Lake Michigan. She loves reading your submissions: each one is a surprise; many of them are fantastic. One of her favorite recent SSL stories was “The People Who Live Inside” by Sarp Sozdinler.
L. Andrew Huffman
L. Andrew Huffman is a writer, educator, and reader living in Central Pennsylvania. Their short fiction and essays can be found out in the ether, or in a more centrally located list of publications at landrewhuffman.com. They would always rather be reading or wandering in the woods with their spouse and their dog, Leroy. They often think about SSL’s “Inheritance” by Luke Wortley and maybe you do too.
Thomas Mixon
Tyler McAndrew
Tyler McAndrew grew up in Syracuse, NY and currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh and at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12, a magnet school for creative and performing arts in the Pittsburgh Public School District. He is the author of My Prisoner & Other Stories (Mad Creek Books / Ohio State University Press, 2025), which won the 2024 Non / Fiction Prize. One of his favorite recent SSL stories is “Cloisters,” by Danny Goodman.
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Why?
A few years ago, after primarily devoting energies to novel- and essay-writing, Aaron started writing short stories again. And when it came time to send them out, he looked around and… wasn’t sure where to send them. There are exceptions, of course, but it felt like there were a lot of great journals publishing fun, powerful, weird, exciting flash fiction and then the journals publishing longer stories felt… less exciting. He wanted to try to fill that gap in between.
Also, he missed editing and publishing short stories.
Aaron founded Hobart in 2001, which he edited and oversaw until stepping away in 2021. Across those 20 years, he edited and published stories that were anthologized in Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and countless other stories that were equally loved and special but maybe got less officially recognized.
So, in 2023, he started Short Story, Long. And so far it has been even more fun, and published even higher caliber of work, than expected.
Thank you for reading!
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Can I submit?
Yes!
So far, submissions have been opening for a month, every 3-5 months. Would love that to be a more regular schedule but, at least for now, this slightly more random schedule has been making it all a little more manageable. If there is a call open, it will be live on our Submittable; if there are no open calls, there likely will be in the next month or two? Subscribe and you’ll be among the first to know when submissions reopen!
https://ashortstorylong.submittable.com/submit
