Brevity publishes well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form.  In his preface to In Short, Bernard Cooper suggests that flash nonfiction “requires an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens ... until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.” We fully agree. We are looking for essays with vivid detail, strong voice, and no wasted words.   

Upon acceptance, we ask for first serial rights, as well as the possibility of publishing your work in a future anthology; all subsequent rights revert immediately to the author. Authors will be paid a $45 honorarium for work selected.   

We seldom publish previously-published work, but we aren't ruling it out. Please let us know if your essay has appeared previously, and where it has appeared. We do not consider works that are forthcoming in other publications.  

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please alert us — by withdrawing your submission — as soon as possible if your essay has been taken by another venue. Multiple submissions are fine, but please break them up into separate submissions. We attempt to respond to all submissions within 90 days.

 Submissions should be formatted as seen on our Brevity site: single space, no indentation, space between paragraphs/unless alternate formatting is a specific design element of the essay).

Brevity does not accept submissions of AI-generated work, which includes writing that was partially created with or assisted by LLM technology. If an AI submission is identified, it will be rejected. We also reserve the right to withdraw acceptances from any work found to be AI-generated, even after publication.