Literary Orphans primarily publishes short stories, micro fiction, and flash fiction but they are also open to publishing creative non fiction and poetry. They are an online journal with a high acceptance rate, so if you want to get your short story out in the world, they are a good option.
Literary Orphans has an aesthetically pleasing and easy to use website. They always pair a photo with a short story. Because of this, they also accept photography and art submissions. It is easy to browse to get a feel for the short stories that they publish.
The writing they publish tends to be clearly written, with a point. Nothing too complicated or nonsensical.
Literary Orphans accept as many short stories at a time as you want to send, as long as they are, collectively under 5,000 words. If you have one short story that is longer then 5,000 words you must send a query letter first to their email address. A query letter usually involves a brief description of your short story and how many words it involves.
They do not pay for your publication, but the site is fairly well known so many people will get the opportunity to read your work. Even if they reject your work the first time they almost always give feedback so you will know why they rejected your work, and what you might be able to change in order to improve it. This feedback can be very helpful.
Literary Orphans usually responds to submissions within twenty days which means you do not have to wait too long to get feedback. They also accept simultaneous submissions so you can submit your piece to more then one place at a time, as long as you notify them upon acceptance.
They use a common submission manager called submittable. Once you sign for a submittable account, or sign into it through your facebook account it is easy to submit after entering a few basic pieces of information about yourself
Best of all, once you have used submittable you do not have to re-enter this information. Instead it just remembers it and all you have to enter is the cover letter/biography for your piece and attach the work itself.
