About Us

Welcome to Read Short Fiction, a place dedicated to shorter works of fiction and their amazing readers.  Yes, a reader of short fiction is someone special – someone who wants the essence of life distilled down to its core, savoring it just as one would a gourmet meal that the chef reduced during cooking to concentrate its flavor.  You, reader, are welcome here.  We want to amass for you a wealth of wonderful stories to entertain and inspire, because life’s too short to read boring fiction.

OUR GOAL

We want Read Short Fiction to be for the short story what so many branded mass market outlets are for celebrity, sports, and political news.  On a downslide for years as money flowed towards novels, the short story (and other shorter forms, like flash fiction and other micro-fiction) is ripe for a rebirth in the everyday reading world.  Think about it: we’re all busy people — often insanely so — and more and more our world around us is getting faster and more condensed.  What, then, makes for better material to read and be entertained by in this always-quickening world: a 300+ page novel, or a 3-10 page short story?  We here at readshortfiction are ecstatic that short fiction is making its comeback and will get its day back in the sun, and we want to be there with the bottle of champagne to welcome it home.

FOR READERS – COMMENTS POLICY

readshortfiction.com, as a reader-focused journal, allows readers to comment on the posted stories.  We believe reader-response to be the essential part of reading that makes it such a worthwhile activity, but with a voice comes responsibility, and we moderate comments to ensure a fair discussion.

Please observe the following one, simple, easy-to-remember guideline when responding to a story.  Ready for it?  Here it is:  1. Be nice. Civil discourse is what we’re about.  It’s fine to comment that you didn’t care for a story, if you’re substantive and forthright.  But rants, flames, and senseless barbs have no place here (but you knew that already).

All comments include a “Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down” feature.  Comments are moderated to prevent spam and to preserve the spirit of what we are hoping to build together.

ABOUT US

We’re editors (and writers) who want to see the day that people talk about the latest Jhumpa Lahiri short story at the water cooler with as much emotion as they do American Idol.  We may be dreamers in that regard, but nothing was ever accomplished without first being someone’s dream.

More specifically, we are:

- Robert Mayette, a writer in several genres, primarily literary fiction, historical fiction and fantasy.  Mr. Mayette holds an MA in English Literature and when not working on his own writing, he loves curling up with anthologies, the occassional literary novel, and works of sci-fi and fantasy.  By day, he works for the consumer marketing division of a major print media company out of New York.

- Kristi Petersen-Schoonover, a writer of literary fiction and horror.  Ms. Petersen-Schoonover holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, where she also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Pitkin Review.  You can read more about Kristi at her website.