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Month: May 2018

Published on Leave a comment on Introducing the National Flash Fiction Anthology 2018

We're absolutely thrilled to be able to share the title of this year's National Flash Fiction Day anthology, along with our full line-up!

This year's title is borrowed from a stunning and moving flash fiction by Alicia Bakewell. 

The cover will be revealed in the near future, and below you can read the full line-up of authors who'll feature in this year's anthology! We can't wait to share all of these stories with you!


Ripening: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2018


Alison Powell Have Your Cake
Joanna Campbell Gingerbread
Abi Hynes How to Eat a Grape
Helen Rye Me ‘N’ Claudz Of A Friday Night Down The Chippy And The Oasis Bar
Kymm Coveny Popcorn
Anna Rymer Eight Weeks Old
Tim Stevenson Not for the Body
Sharon Telfer Caramel Baby
Damhnait Monaghan Habits
Nan Wigington Famous Last Meals
Leonora Desar The Hot Fudge Lady
Deborah Meltvedt Farmer's Market
Sara Chansarkar Mango Pulp
E. P. Chiew For the Love of a Bagel
Emily Devane The Apple Seekers
Kevlin Henney No Carbonara
Olga Wojtas Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Emma Harding Say It with a Cake
Sarah Evans The Word Eater
Sylvia Petter Oysters
H Anthony Hildebrand Ewei
Megan Giddings Milk and Eggs
FJ Morris The Root of It
A. E. Weisgerber Knoxville
Sophie van Llewyn Hi, Dad, How've You Been?
Philip Charter The Change
Claire Polders A Tasting of European Chefs
Jude Higgins The Ways of the Flesh
Nancy Stohlman The Pilgrimage 
Christopher M Drew A Turn of the Tide
Erica Plouffe Lazure The Italic
Alicia Bakewell Ripening
Judy Darley Cornish Gold
Laura Pearson Not Love, Not Carbohydrates
Gay Degani Troy Mills
Calum Kerr Cooking on Gas
Anne Summerfield Only Now Can I Think of All The Things I Should Have Said
Sal Page A Fifteen Stone Woman, with a Six Stone Daughter Who Will Not Eat, Writes Shopping Lists
Rachael Dunlop Border Line
J. E. Kennedy An Offering
Angela Readman Attack of the Robot Grannies
TM Upchurch Plum Skin
Nuala O'Connor Sponge
Diane Simmons A Picnic in the Park
Stephanie Hutton Nourishment
Robert Scotellaro The Polygamist's Three Wives
Ros Woolner Make a Wish
Gemma Govier Bass Drums and Trumpets for Tea
Ingrid Jendrzejewski On the Wabash
Frankie McMillan The Happy Eggs from Podomosky
Meg Pokrass Culinary
Nadia Stone Yaya's Pips
David Cook The Shock Of The New Breakfasts
Jacqueline Saville It's Not Her
Jan Kaneen Sour
Santino Prinzi Nonni
Charlotte Wührer Shipwreck Feast
KM Elkes Late Blackberries
Poppy O'Neill The Creator is Disturbed at Her Vanity by the Cries of Mankind
Christopher Allen Samuel is Mango
Ioanna Mavrou Weekends in Waianae
Jennifer Harvey Thirteen
Tara Laskowski Goodnight Mush
Micro Competition Winners
Fiona J. Mackintosh The Birth of the Baptist
Charmaine Wilkerson Pull
Rachael Dunlop A Nice Bit of Linoleum
Lisa Ferranti Fifth Grade
Amanda O'Callaghan Death of a Friend
Catherine Edmunds Forgetting, Remembering
Rebecca Field Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Alan Beard 1990
Elaine Dillon Louise
Anita Goveas White Lies

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Published on 1 Comment on Micro Fiction Competition Winners!

Before we announce the winners of the micro fiction competition, I want to apologise about a technical issue that meant all of my lovely emails I sent out to authors who entered our micro competition or submitted to the anthology did not send. 

As usual, there were hundreds and hundreds of submitters. We always send out an email to let people know whether or not they've been accepted via a link to this blog where the announcement is made. Only one set of emails actually sent; the rest were bounced back as a failed delivery. Obviously my mail box was working to Bank Holiday rules.

Apologies again if you haven't received an email, but you can find out if you're in the anthology or were shortlisted for the micro competition by checking out our previous blog post.


Without further delay, it's time to announce the results of this year's micro fiction competition!

Again, I want to thank our judges for doing such a stellar job of reading through all 600 entries, narrowing it down to just 24, and then again to only 10. Thank you to Kevlin Henney, Ingrid Jendrzrjewski, Angela Readman, Rob Walton, Brianna Snow, and Anne Patterson. 

I also want to thank everyone who submitted, and to congratulate again all of the authors who made the shortlist -- that, in itself, is a huge achievement. The quality was very high, and this made for a very tight race to the finish.




First Place:

The Birth of the Baptist by Fiona J. Mackintosh

Second Place:
Pull by Charmaine Wilkerson

Third Place:
A Nice Bit of Linoleum by Rachael Dunlop

Highly Commended Stories:

Fifth Grade by Lisa Ferranti
Death of a Friend by Amanda O’Callaghan
Forgetting, Remembering by Catherine Edmunds
Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message by Rebecca Field
1990 by Alan Beard
Louise by Elaine Dillon
White Lies by Anita Goveas

Congratulations to all of the authors of our winning and highly commended micros! 

All of the stories are published below, will appear on our website in due course, and will be published in this year's National Flash Fiction Day anthology! We hope you love these micros as much as we do!


First Place:

The Birth of the Baptist
Fiona J. Mackintosh
Slide the 100 lire coin into the slot. Watch the lights flare, the fresco spring to life, Ghirlandaio’s pinks, blues, and greens. Watch your girl in denim shorts stare upward, lips parted, eyes roaming over the ancient stone wall. See her smile at St. Elizabeth reclining, at the wet nurse suckling the infant John the Baptist. And when the coin runs out and the chapel snaps back into darkness, know that you too are just the forerunner, that one day she’ll leave you in your own private wilderness with the taste of locusts and wild honey bitter in your mouth.
Second Place:
Pull
Charmaine Wilkerson
When their fathers went to the cockfights in the next parish over, the girls begged rides from the neighbour boys. While their dads wiped flecks of blood from their faces, the girls left their shoes and dresses on the sand. While the boys watched, rapt and rigid, from the powdery shore, the girls plunged, head first, into the warm saltwater, pulling through the waves, pulling through their fear of sharks, pulling through the sting of rays, pulling against lactic acid and breathing in gulps of their future as champions, their ticket away from this island.
Third Place:
A Nice Bit of Linoleum
Rachael Dunlop
The smell of lavender floor wax accompanies her out of the house. She’d rather have linoleum in the hall but parquet has more cachet, he says. She sniffs at her cardigan cuffs. She could have tucked them better into her housecoat this morning. At the greengrocer’s she runs a nail along the silky gills of a mushroom and inhales, longing for a life lived in the leaf-mould litter of a forest floor, peaty earth under her stockinged feet. Failing that, she thinks as she drops the mushroom into a torn-cornered paper bag, she’d settle for a nice bit of linoleum. 
Highly Commended Stories:
Fifth Grade 
Lisa Ferranti
Fifth grade was the year we giggled through the school nurse’s explanation of menstruation. The year boys were not separated from girls, and Jimmy M. fainted, fell at my feet. The year we ogled bare-breasted fertility statues at the art museum. Told we were forbidden to touch. I waited for the teacher to round the corner, pointed my finger a baby’s breath from the carved stone. I swung my hair, tried to catch Jimmy’s eye. Fifth grade was the year I learned to say without saying: Dare me?The year a blue-blazered security guard grabbed my arm.  
Death of a Friend
Amanda O’Callaghan
When she met her gaze, that last time, she remembered the mouse. Once, standing on the back verandah, night sunk deep into the trees, she’d heard the sound of bird’s wings, wheeling close. She knew it was the owl; she’d seen it, days before, perched on the sheeny muscle of ghost gum, turning its domed head. But this time, she could see nothing. There was only the lethal fold of feathers, swooping down, close to the grass. Then, a tiny creature carried aloft, shrieking from its miniature lungs, the shape of its outrage borne away, beyond a pitiless moon. 
Forgetting, Remembering
Catherine Edmunds
The gulf between us is a river in spate. We nudge each other when the snoring becomes intolerable, but our arms remain empty. 
You go up for an afternoon nap, and don’t come down again. The paramedics ask me my name. I don’t know any more.  
Later, I iron all your shirts, your socks, ties, hats, documents; I iron the bedsheets and spray them with starch until the river has subsided. I lie on the hot, alien sheets and scorch my back and buttocks until I remember my name.
Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Rebecca Field
My toothbrush. My spare contact lenses. That Bob Dylan album I lent you. The old Iron Maiden T-shirt you gave me to sleep in at your place. My Fight Club video. Your housemates, except for that one time I saw Dave in Fulton’s Frozen Foods and he blanked me. Your house cat – I wonder who fed him once I wasn’t there anymore. You in the morning with the shakes, thinking about your next drink. All the money I lent you to go out drinking without me. Best of all, that look my mother would give me when I mentioned you.
1990
Alan Beard
Girl in a Blockbusters smelling of Shake ‘n’ Vac, stares blankly in her soft plumpness and soft permed hair at the pop video playing. Vanilla Ice. She thinks of customers’ lives, their homes as they return last night’s film: Ghost, Petty Woman. Evenings ahead with her husband watching videos, maybe this boy who hangs around, chats to her between customers. Does she even like him? He has big brown eyes. He says put on heavy metal. Ugh, she says, not likely. She’s old fashioned, likes the Carpenters; the woman starved herself to death, but sang beautifully before she did.
Louise
Elaine Dillon
The thunder that meant the end of summer sent us running inside, just as the rain started hissing on the path. Fat drops topped up the paddling pool.
We sat in the doorframe and dared Louise to do something we wouldn’t, for fear of a leathering.  
She pulled off her swimsuit and exploded over the threshold. The grass licked her heels and her fine hair soaked dark against her back, as she sprinted towards the leylandii and launched herself through, like she was diving into a deep pool.
We sat with our mouths open and a towel across our laps.
White Lies
Anita Goveas
It's a tradition for Block B, Mary Gee Hall to eat together every Sunday. The first week of the Easter holidays, there's only three students eating lentil spag bol.
Shaven-headed Angus and curvy-hipped Lei are touching feet under the table, and mumbling about their individual plans for the week to their kitchen-mate. Peony-faced Kate cries at wildlife documentaries and once filled Lei's bed with rose petals for Valentine's day.
Leicester University is teaching them essay-writing, what happens when you put a black sock in with your whites, and that what you don’t say is more important than what you do.



Published on Leave a comment on Micro Fiction Competition and Food Anthology Announcements!

Good afternoon, flashers! 

We are now in our seventh year of National Flash Fiction Day! As always, both our micro fiction competition and annual anthology encourage hundreds of you to send us your best flashes, and this year was no different. Both competitions were incredibly fierce this year, but I can finally share with you all some news!

Micro Fiction Competition Shortlist

This year we had around 600 entries for our micro fiction competition, where we asked you to write a story of 100 words or fewer on any theme. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our brilliant judges who had the rewarding but difficult task of whittling these 600 entries to a shortlist of just 24 stories: Angela Readman, Anne Patterson, Briana Snow, Ingrid Jendrzrjewski, Kevlin Henny, and Rob Walton. 

We'd also like to thank you all for submitting! 

Without further delay, here's this year's shortlisted authors and titles:

Alan Beard 1990
Rachael Dunlop A Nice Bit of Linoleum
Wes Lee Conch
Amanda O'Callaghan Death of a Friend
Lisa Ferranti Fifth Grade
Carmen Marcus First Date
Catherine Edmunds Forgetting, Remembering
Alison Woodhouse Home Fires
Victoria Richards I remember her in espadrilles
Gaynor Jones Ladybird, Ladybird
Elaine Dillon Louise
Jan Kaneen My Teenage Son Defining Words Just Before I challenge his use of Possessive Pronouns
Jeanette Davies Primigravida at the Day Centre
Charmaine Wilkerson Pull
David Cook Revenge, Via Handicrafts
Lucy Goldring School Run
Noa Sivan Sign Language
Clare O'Brien Suspension
Graham W. Henderson Ten Minute IQ Test
Fiona J. Mackintosh The Birth of the Baptist
Shirl Weir The Haves and the Have Nots
Jan Kaneen The Last Six Things I’ll Have Done by the Time You Wake up
Rebecca Field Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Anita Groveas White Lies

Congratulations to all of our shortlisted authors! The judges have already chosen the winning stories, and a further announcement will be made once all of the scores have been collated. The winning and highly commended flashes will be published on our website and in this year's flash fiction anthology.

NFFD Food-themed Flash Fiction Anthology

Again, this year our anthology editors have had hundreds of incredible flashes to read and choose from, making selecting 50 stories for the anthology extremely enjoyable, but equally tricky. 

Myself and this year's co-editor, Alison Powell, challenged you all to write flashes of 500 words or fewer responding to the theme of Food, and were so spoilt for choice! There were numerous delicacies for us to sink our teeth into, and so many different responses to the theme. We feel that this anthology is going to be something really special.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Alison for all of her hard work in helping me choose our top 50 stories. 

And so, here are our anthology authors and their flashes:

Philip Charter The Change
KM Elkes Late Blackberries
Nan Wigington Famous Last Meals
Nuala O'Connor Sponge
J. E. Kennedy An Offering
Frankie McMillan The Happy Eggs from Podomosky
Ingrid Jendrzrjewski On the Wabash
Jude Higgins The Ways of the Flesh
Alicia Bakewell Ripening
Joanna Campbell Gingerbread
Nadia Stone Yaya's Pips
Charlotte Wührer Shipwreck Feast
Diane Simmons A Picnic in the Park
Sylvia Petter Oysters
Judy Darley Cornish Gold
Sal Page A Fifteen Stone Woman, with a Six Stone Daughter Who Will Not Eat, Writes Shopping Lists
Christopher M Drew A Turn of the Tide
Sarah Evans The Word Eater
E. P. Chiew For the Love of a Bagel
Rachael Dunlop Border Line
Emily Devane The Apple Seekers
Anna Rymer Eight Weeks Old
Helen Rye Me ‘N’ Claudz Of A Friday Night Down The Chippy And The Oasis Bar
Emma Harding Say It with a Cake
Anne Summerfield Only Now Can I Think of All The Things I Should Have Said
Olga Wojtas Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Sophie van Llewyn Hi, Dad, How've You Been?
Sharon Telfer Caramel Baby
Ioanna Mavrou Weekends in Waianae
Gay Degani Troy Mills
Jan Kaneen Sour
Sara Chansarkar Mango Pulp
Claire Polders A Tasting of European Chefs
Ros Woolner Make a Wish
Stephanie Hutton Nourishment
Jacqueline Saville It's Not Her
FJ Morris The Root of It
Damhnait Monaghan Habits
A. E. Weisgerber Knoxville
Poppy O'Neill The Creator is Disturbed at Her Vanity
Jennifer Harvey Thirteen
H Anthony Hildebrand Ewei
David Cook The Shock Of The New Breakfasts
Kymm Coveny Popcorn
Deborah Meltvedt Farmer's Market
Erica Plouffe Lazure The Italic
Laura Pearson Not Love, Not Carbohydrates
Gemma Govier Bass Drums and Trumpets for Tea
TM Upchurch Plum Skin
Abi Hynes How to Eat a Grape

Congratulations to all of our authors! The full line-up with stories from guest authors will be announced at a later date, as well as the title and cover reveal!

Thank you all, as always, for supporting National Flash Fiction Day! We can't wait to announce the winners of the micro competition and to serve up our food-themed flash anthology!


Meanwhile, if you're planning an event for National Flash Fiction Day on or around Saturday 16th June, please don't hesitate to email us at nationalflashfictionday@gmail.co.uk with all of the details, and we'll help shout out about it!