About

We publish classically inspired short stories on a monthly basis.*

Doric Literary is a bare-bones fiction site that takes its name from the oldest order of Greek architecture. Known for simple and unadorned but highly functional and enduring forms, a Doric temple perfectly represents what we look for in a short story: a solid foundation or beginning, soaring columns or plotlines that lead directly to a satisfying and beautiful conclusion that still has impact and relevance in the modern world.

By “classically inspired” we mean that the more it reads like something from Flannery O’Connor or Katherine Mansfield, the better. Contemporary settings are fine: think of stories like “Peach Cobler” by Deesha Philyaw or “Sexy Motherfucker’s Mom” by Maureen Langloss.

We have no submission fees, we pay a tiny honourarium, and we will be submitting nominations for the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize, Best American Short Stories, & Best of the Net.

* Sometimes more often.

Masthead

Editor: Dave Gregory (website)

Dave has been an associate editor with Exposition Review since 2018; he was elevated to fiction co-editor in 2023 and fiction editor in 2025. He also spent years as a reader for Gigantic Sequins (2018-2021) and served a term as editor-in-chief of Five South (2022-2023). He has been writing for decades and his own fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appeared on the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist. His interview for the Short Story Today podcast appeared in March 2024. He lives in Canada but sailed the world from 2000 to 2017 while working on cruise ships.

Fiction Reviewer: MJ Malleck (website)

MJ writes fiction and creative non-fiction ranging from “drabbles” to flash to novellas. Since 2019 her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, EVENT, The Dalhousie Review, Agnes & True and other literary magazines online and in print. In 2024 she won the flash fiction contest at gritLIT festival in Hamilton, Ontario; placed second in Geist’s 19th Postcard Contest and had a story included in the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology in Bath, UK. MJ is a Fiction Reader for The TEMZ Review and is excited to support founding-editor Dave Gregory as a second reader.   

This is the photo I was looking at when I thought of the name for the journal, and the image I used to design the blue and white logo. This is St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The present building dates to 1838. All other Doric temple photos on this website were taken in Agrigento, Sicily, where the ruins are roughly 2,500 years old.