Stories in River and Sound
River and Sound Review is an independent literary journal for short stories, and this page is a guide to its fiction: the 14 issues of the journal since issue 1 in 2011, the short stories and flash fiction each issue published, and the names of the authors behind them. A reader of short fiction who wants to find stories like these also needs the rest of the field, so the page doubles as a working list of literary magazines for short stories, with the rates and response times of the top options a submitter will actually encounter. The companion page, Poetry in Literary Magazines, covers the same territory for verse, and the two pages together map where contemporary short fiction and poetry are actually published.
What the journal publishes
The core of the journal is the short story, which fills roughly half of every issue alongside flash fiction, and the two forms share the same open submissions window. The remaining space in each issue holds poetry, one essay, and the 250 word review of a current novel that gives the journal its name. Each issue runs 32 pages, about 6,000 words of fiction per issue, and a new issue appears twice a year, in spring and fall. The stories lean literary rather than genre: character driven, often quiet, and set anywhere from a 1970s Maine diner to a 2019 Lagos apartment, which is why the archive reads less like a single house style and more like a map of the short story in English today.
How the fiction is organized by issue
The archive is organized by issue, and every story can be located by its issue number, its author, and its theme. Each entry in the archive carries 3 fields: the issue number and year, the word count, and one or two theme tags, such as migration, grief, or the everyday, so a search on any of the 3 fields finds a story in under a minute. The table below holds the fiction from the 5 most recent issues, and the same issue by issue layout runs back to issue 1 in 2011. Flash fiction, the stories under 1,000 words, is tagged in the same column as its longer neighbors, so a reader hunting flash finds it without switching lists.
| Issue | Year | Title | Author | Words | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 2025 | The Long Way Past the Diner | Ada Eze | 4,800 | Migration |
| 14 | 2025 | Salt on the Stairs | Tom Grady | 620 | Grief |
| 13 | 2024 | Paper Rivers | Mina Okafor | 3,100 | Memory |
| 13 | 2024 | A Small Weather | June Bell | 880 | The Everyday |
| 12 | 2023 | The Cartographer's Lunch | Priya Anand | 5,200 | Work |
| 12 | 2023 | Fourteen Steps | Cole Whitfield | 410 | History |
| 11 | 2022 | What the River Kept | Sofia Marchetti | 2,900 | Grief |
| 11 | 2022 | Lagos, 8 A.M. | David Osei | 750 | Migration |
| 10 | 2021 | The Diner at the Edge of the Map | Hana Sato | 3,600 | Place |
| 10 | 2021 | A Two Person Orchestra | Leo Brandt | 980 | The Everyday |
Where to submit short fiction
The literary magazines that accept short story submissions are many, but the 8 in the table below are the ones a fiction writer is most likely to submit to first: they are accepting, they pay, and their response times are short enough that a story keeps moving. River and Sound Review is included as a baseline, because its open window, its 15 day turnaround, and its 0.05 cent per word rate are the terms a new submitter will measure the rest of the list against. The remaining rows cover the top literary magazines for fiction that a short story writer should have on hand, from the big name quarterlies to the flash focused venues, and each row lists the payment and the response time in the same units, so a writer can compare a 30 cent story payment against a 150 cent short story payment without doing arithmetic.
| Magazine | What it accepts | Pays | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|
| River and Sound Review | Short stories, flash | 0.05 cent per word, about 300 cents for a 6,000 word story | 15 days |
| Ploughshares | Short fiction | 15 cents per page, 50 cents minimum | 8 weeks |
| One Story | 1 story per year | 500 dollars | 12 weeks |
| Craft | Short fiction | 0.10 cent per word | 4 weeks |
| Fiction Magazine | Short stories | 40 cents per page | 6 weeks |
| Flash Fiction Online | Flash under 1,000 words | 50 cents per story | 3 weeks |
| Clarkesworld | Speculative fiction | 7 cents per word | 10 weeks |
| The Common | Short stories | 250 cents per story | 5 weeks |
Two notes make the table usable. First, the magazines accepting submissions for short stories are not the same as the ones that will accept any story: One Story takes exactly 1 story per year and does not take flash, while Flash Fiction Online takes only flash under 1,000 words and will not touch a 6,000 word story. Second, the historical fiction question gets its own row below, because the best literary journals for short stories in a genre are a different list from the top general list above.
Flash fiction and the short form
The literary magazines for flash fiction are a distinct shelf from the general short story list, and the 4 that take flash as a core form are worth knowing by name. Flash is the story under 1,000 words, the form that has grown fastest in literary magazines over the last 10 years, and River and Sound Review publishes 2 flash pieces in nearly every issue. A writer with a 400 word story is better off submitting to a flash venue than trimming to fit a general magazine, because the flash editors read for compression the way general editors read for arc. The 4 venues below take flash as a standing category, not as an afterthought, and each pays for it.
- Flash Fiction Online, 50 cents per story, response in 3 weeks
- Fiction Magazine, flash category, 40 cents per page
- River and Sound Review, 0.05 cent per word, response in 15 days
- One Foot, flash and short, 200 cents per story
Historical and genre fiction
The literary magazines for historical fiction are fewer than the general list, and a writer in a genre should match the venue to the story rather than forcing the story to the venue. Historical short fiction, set in a past period and written in a literary register, has a small but steady shelf of venues, and the 3 most reliable are listed below. The same match applies to the wider genre side: a speculative story goes to Clarkesworld, a literary story goes to Ploughshares or Craft, and a flash piece goes to the flash list above. The 3 historical venues below all pay, and all 3 have published historical short fiction within the last 2 years.
- The Missouri Review, historical and literary, 30 cents per page
- American Short Story Review, historical category, 100 cents per story
- The Threepenny Review, historical essays and fiction, 50 cents per piece
How to get published in the journal
To get published in River and Sound Review, a writer submits 1 story through the open submissions window, which is open 6 months of the year and closed for editing and design in the other 6. The window opens in January and in July, and a story submitted in the first 2 weeks of a window gets a decision by day 15, while a story submitted in the last 2 weeks waits for the next cycle. The journal takes 1 story per writer per year, does not accept previously published work, and pays 0.05 cent per word on publication, which works out to 300 cents for a 6,000 word story. The 3 steps in order: submit 1 story under 8,000 words, wait the 15 day turnaround, and if accepted, prepare the 32 page issue layout with the editor. The journal is a new, independent project unaffiliated with any earlier brand by a similar name, and that independence is why it can take risks the older mastheads cannot.
What the archive is for
The archive exists so that a reader can find a story by issue, by author, or by theme without guessing, and so that a writer can study the 14 issues as a working model of what a small literary journal publishes. A reader who wants the verse side of the same field will find it in the Poetry in Literary Magazines guide, where the journals, the rates, and the response times are laid out in the same format used here. A writer who has found the right venue in the table above should treat the 15 day turnaround as the floor: anything slower is a queue, and anything faster is a signal. The short story, in the hands of the 8 magazines on the list, remains the most generous and most accessible of the literary forms, and the 14 issues of this journal are where that generosity is visible, story by story.