We'll be resuming our 2023 interview series with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges next week, but in the meantime, we thought we'd revisit NFFD's Anthology Editor Karen Jones' advice for anthology submitters from her 3 January 2022 interview with Diane Simmons.
Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023.
Diane: Every year, National Flash Fiction Day produces an anthology with a unique theme. Is there anything you would like to particularly see in this year's submissions? Or not see?
Karen: I’d love to see some wild interpretations of the theme – things I hadn’t thought of, things that make me sit up and take notice. I always say when I’m judging or acting as submissions editor that I want you to surprise me, and it’s no different here. Themes can be constricting but I hope this one can be interpreted widely enough to allow people do something different. Or, you know, if you’re telling an old story, at least tell it in a new way.
I don’t particularly want to see a lot of pandemic stories, purely because I’ve seen so many already, and I’m also not a big fan of twist endings. Other subjects it’s probably best to avoid, again, because we see them so often, are dementia/Alzheimer’s, cancer, death of a child. I’m not saying don’t write about any of these things, just be aware that you may be up against lots of others writing on the same themes, and that immediately reduces your chances of being accepted.
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.