Month: November 2022

It's nearly that time of year again...time to submit to the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology and our annual Microfiction Competition!

We are delighted to welcome Damhnait Monaghan to the National Flash Fiction Day team as this year's guest editor for the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day anthology.  She'll be joining NFFD's Anthology Editor Karen Jones in putting together this year's anthology of flash fiction from around the world.  You can read more about this year's editors here.

The theme for this year’s anthology is TIME. Do you see it stretching before you, or reaching back? Is there never enough, or does it drag? Does it make you rush, slow you down, make you wish for more? Where will time take you? We can’t wait to find out.

Feel free to interpret the theme however you wish, in 500 words or fewer. Selected flashes will be published in National Flash Fiction Day's 12th Annual Anthology. Payment is one contributor's copy of the anthology.

Entries will also be open for the Microfiction Competition, but there is no theme.  Competition winners and runners up will be published in the anthology as well as the time-themed flash.

Both projects will be open for submissions from the 1st of December 2022 to the 15th of February 2023.

 

With our submission window set to open shortly we'd like to take a moment to introduce you to this year's judging panel.  This year, we're excited to announce that Tim Craig, Amanda Huggins, Fiona J. Mackintosh and Johanna Robinson will be reading your submissions.  These fantastic flash writers, readers and editors will be doing it all: reading the submissions that come in, compiling a shortlist, and then deciding on the winning and highly commended pieces.

Our submission window opens on Thursday 1 December 2022 and closes on Wednesday 15 February 2023.  We will be announcing results on or before 15 March 2023.  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 2023 competition, we're thrilled that all our highly commended runners-up as well as our first, second and third place winners will receive cash prizes. All winning and commended pieces will be published online as well as in the 2023 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 2023 NFFD Microfiction Competition and we look forward to reading your work!

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2023 Microfiction Competition Judges

Originally from Manchester, Tim Craig lives in London. A previous winner of the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction, his short-short fiction has placed or been commended four times in the Bath Flash Fiction Award and has also appeared in the Best Microfiction 2019 and 2022 anthologies. His debut collection Now You See Him was published in 2022 by AdHoc Fiction.

Amanda Huggins is the author of All Our Squandered Beauty and Crossing the Lines – both of which won a Saboteur Award for Best Novella – as well as five collections of short stories and poetry. Amanda's fiction and travel writing have appeared in publications such as Mslexia, Popshot, Tokyo Weekender, The Telegraph, Traveller, Wanderlust and the Guardian. Three of her flash fiction stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio. She has won numerous awards, including the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award, the H E Bates Short Story Prize and the British Guild of Travel Writers New Travel Writer of the Year. She was a runner-up in the Costa Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Prize, The Alpine Fellowship Award and many others. Amanda lives in Yorkshire and works as an editor and publishing assistant.

Fiona J. Mackintosh (www.fionajmackintosh.com) is the Scottish-American author of a flash collection, The Yet Unknowing World published in the UK by Ad Hoc Fiction. She has won the Fish, Bath, Reflex, Flash 500, and NFFD Micro competitions, and her short stories have been listed in several competitions in the UK and Ireland. She lives just outside Washington D.C., and her historical novel Ancestral Virgins is currently on submission to agents.

Johanna Robinson is based near Liverpool, UK, and has been writing short fiction since 2016. Her work has been featured in various magazines and anthologies, including SmokeLong, Reflex Press and Mslexia. In 2020, she won the TSS Cambridge Prize for Flash Fiction and the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and in 2019 Ad Hoc Fiction published her novella-in-flash Homing, which follows a Norwegian Resistance family in the Second World War. She is currently working on a novel set in Victorian Liverpool, and has been funded by Arts Council England. More of her work can be found at www.johanna-robinson.com.