After reading scads of briilant stories on the theme of TIME, Karen Jones and Damhnait Monaghan have finalised their selections for the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and for the second annual Editors' Choice Awards.
Below is the list of the 50 stories that will appear in this year's anthology, alongside the 2023 Microfiction Competition Winners. We will be contacting everyone on the list via email, so you should hear from us soon if you haven't already, but in the meantime, congratulations to all the authors listed below.
Special congratulations to our two Editors' Choice Award Winners:
- Damhnait Monaghan chose Cuttlefish by Patricia Q. Bidar
- Karen Jones chose Time Takes by Anne Summerfield
Thank you so much to everybody who submitted their stories for consideration for this year's anthology. It was an honour to read each and every piece. Thank you for sharing your work with us! If you didn't make the anthology this time, don't forget that there are still opportunities to join us in celebrating National Flash Fiction Day, including FlashFlood and The Write-In.
We hope that you will all join us for the launch of the anthology on National Flash Fiction Day later this year!
2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Line Up
- 1969 by Kathryn Kulpa
- ABC by Benjamin Judge
- A Heatwave Afternoon in The Supermarket, in The Universe That is Ours, Momentarily by Rachael Dunlop
- A Hedge of Holly by Roberta Beary
- A Seed Drops by Sharon Telfer
- Black Sun by Audrey Niven
- Bruce Lee Lives by Seamus Scanlon
- Cuttlefish by Patricia Q. Bidar
- Disappointment at Not Visiting the SS Great Britain by Emma Phillips
- Ember Days by Rosaleen Lynch
- Five Colour Clearance by Rupert Dastur
- Gap Years by Julia Ruth Smith
- Grapefruit in June by Kik Lodge
- Haute Couture by Teika Marija Smits
- How to Go Back and Start Again by Fiona McKay
- How to Sleep on Friday Night by Mandira Pattnaik
- In the Time It Takes to Boil the Kettle by Sharon Boyle
- I Want David Attenborough to Talk About Me in Hushed Tones by Kristina Thornton
- Javelin Girl by Rebecca Field
- Just One Big Happy Family by Cheryl Markosky
- Last Orders for Lost Souls, The Lost Chance Saloon by Kate Axeford
- Look Both Ways by D. Dina Friedman
- Mirrors by Anita Goveas
- Now, Go Back by Sara Hills
- Our Golden Hours by Steven Patchett
- Our Tide Turns by Marie Gethins
- Peeker-Hole by Angela Joynes
- Rain Days in Biodome Three by Lindsey Croal
- Rewind by Philip Charter
- Scheele’s Green by Rosaleen Lynch
- Scratching the Sands by Christine Collinson
- Slugs in the Kitchen by Rebecca Field
- Spring Back by Mick Bennett
- The Leftovers by Eleonora Balsano
- Then, Now by Marie Gethins
- The music of absence, Berlin 1989 by Maria Thomas
- The Paperbark Trees by Helena Pantsis
- The Philistines Ring the Doorbell by Isabel Yacura
- The Three Times I Loved You The Most In Water by Nicole Davis
- Time Takes by Anne Summerfield
- Were You Ever There? by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
- We Tried by Kim Magowan
- What’s been said about slate by Ruth Bradshaw
- What the Well Knows by Catherine Ogston
- When There Was No Word for Angel by Emma Phillips
- Where Are You? by Nuala O’Connor
- White Rabbit by Nora Nadjarian
- Wood Wide Web by Karen Arnold
- Venus of Willendorf by Pam Plumb
- You Die First by Andy Lavender