With our submission window set to open in less than a week, we'd like to take a moment to introduce you to this year's judging panel. This year, we're super excited to announce that Christopher Allen, Joanna Campbell, Tracy Fells, and Damhnait Monaghan will be reading your submissions. These fantastic flash writers, readers and editors will be doing it all: reading all the submissions that come in, compiling a shortlist, and then deciding on the winning and highly commended pieces.
Our submission window opens on Wednesday, 1 December 2021 and closes on Tuesday, 15 February 2022. We will be announcing results on or before 15 March 2022. We'll be reading flash of up to 100 words on any theme, but we are not able to consider simultaneous submissions this year.
For the 2022 competition, we're thrilled to be able to increase our prize pot by including cash prizes for all of our highly commended runners-up as well as our first, second and third place winners. All winning and commended pieces will be published online as well as in the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day print anthology. Check back on 1 December for full details and submission guidelines.
In the new year, we'll be posting interviews with our judges so you can get a better sense of what they're looking for, but in the meantime, you can read more about each of them below.
Huge thanks to our judges for taking on the 2022 NFFD Microfiction Competition and we look forward to reading your work!
2022 Microfiction Competition Judges
Submissions are open from 1 December 2021 to 15 February 2022.
Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins and the editor-in-chief of SmokeLong Quarterly. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Split Lip, Booth, The Best Small Fictions and many other fine places. An instructor for more than 30 years, he teaches the flash narrative in workshops around the world, mostly online these days. He is a nomad.
Joanna Campbell is a full-time writer from the Cotswolds. Her short stories have won first place in the 2011 Exeter Writers competition, the 2013 Bath Short Story Award Local Prize, the 2015 London Short Story Prize, the 2018 Magic Oxygen Literary Prize and the 2018 Retreat West Short Story Prize. Joanna’s flash fiction won second place in the 2017 Bridport Prize, for which her short stories have been shortlisted many times. Her novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was a runner-up in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award and published in How To Make A Window Snake (Ad Hoc Fiction). Her short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, was published in 2016 (Ink Tears). It was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill University Story Prize. Her novel, Tying Down The Lion, was published in 2015 (Brick Lane Publishing). Her next novel, Instructions for the Working Day, will be published in 2022 (Fairlight Books). She is on Twitter at @joannacampbell_.
Tracy Fells was the 2017 Regional Winner (Europe and Canada) for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her short fiction has been widely published in print journals and online, including: Granta, Brittle Star, Reflex Fiction, Popshot Quarterly, Firewords, Funny Pearls and the Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies (2019 & 2020). She has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish Flash Fiction prizes, placed in the Reflex Fiction competition and Highly Commended in the NFFD Microfiction competition (2016 & 2020). In 2016 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Chichester University. She is a regular reader for several large short story competitions and leads writing workshops on short fiction. Tracy also writes novels and was a finalist in the 2018 Richard & Judy ‘Search for a Bestseller’ competition. Her debut novella-in-flash Hairy on the Inside was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021. She tweets as @theliterarypig.
Damhnait Monaghan was born and grew up in Canada but now lives in the U.K. Her flash fiction has won or placed in various competitions and is widely published and anthologised. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions. Her novella in flash The Neverlands (V.Press) won Best Novella in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. Her debut novel New Girl in Little Cove is out now with Harper Collins.
Karen Jones is a flash and short story writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Micro Fiction and The Pushcart Prize, and her story Small Mercies was included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and BIFFY50 2019. In 2021 she won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize, Flash 500, Reflex Fiction and Retreat West Monthly Micro and was shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction, Bath Short Story Award and longlisted for Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her novella-in-flash, When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review.
Christopher M Drew is a writer from Yorkshire. He started submitting flash fiction in 2015 and since then has been published widely in online journals and print anthologies. He has won second prize in the Bath Flash Fiction (2016), Reflex Fiction (2018), and Forge Literary Flash Fiction (2019) competitions. His SmokeLong Quarterly story Alligator was selected for Best British and Irish Flash Fiction 2019, and When we were young, originally published in trampset, was selected for Best Microfiction 2021. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net, and was one of the founding editors of the historical flash fiction journal FlashBack Fiction. You can connect with Chris on Twitter (@cmdrew81), or through his website (