After reading scads of brilliant stories on the theme of SEASONS, editors Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky have finalised their selections for the 2025 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and for the third annual Editors' Choice Awards.
Below is the list of the stories that will appear in this year's anthology, alongside the 2025 Microfiction Competition winners (yet to be announced). 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:
- Cheryl Markosky chose ‘Winter in the Cryolab’ by Rebecca Field
- Karen Jones chose ‘A Firefly’s Guide to Heart Disease’ by Gill O'Halloran
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!
2025 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Line Up
- 'A Fence for Christmas' by Kleopatra Olympiou
- 'A Firefly’s Guide to Heart Disease' by Gill O'Halloran
- 'A Near-Life Experience' by Jennifer Brutschy
- 'A Scattering of Pomegranate Seeds' by Denise Bayes
- 'Advice to a 1950s Bride' by Alison Wassell
- 'Batten Down' by Anita Goveas
- 'Bobby the UPS Guy Had Sausage and Eggs for Breakfast' by Beth Sherman
- 'Buying Groceries as an Immigrant' by Alice Lyon
- 'Cat Napped' by Cath Holland
- 'Cooking With Nonna' by Stephanie Percival
- 'Crying Creek' by Marielle Mondon
- 'How Does Your Garden Grow?' by Sharon Telfer
- 'How to Befriend a Snowman' by Matt Leibel
- 'In Winter a Tornado Touches Down' by Debra A. Daniel
- 'Knocking Over the Poles' by Coleman Bigelow
- 'Mary Elizabeth is Pupating Again' by Lucienne Cummings
- 'Migration' by MJ Malleck
- 'Monsoon' by Sudha Balagopal
- 'Nothing is Normal Today' by Linda Grierson-Irish
- 'Objects in the Lost Property Box the Day After the Office Christmas Party' by Sarah McPherson
- 'Peak Season' by Sara Hills
- 'Pendulum' by Sonora Hills
- 'Preparation for Flight' by Jupiter Jones
- 'Rainy Season' by Paul Thompson
- 'Rolled' by Kim Steutermann Rogers
- 'Sailing out of Motor Town' by Audrey Niven
- 'Season’s Greetings' by Susan Wigmore
- 'Solstitium, Orkney' by Catherine Ogston
- 'Sometimes the Watchers Watch the Monitors, Sometimes They Look Out the Window' by Audrey Niven
- 'Swimming Lessons' by Kim Steutermann Rogers
- 'Tall Man Standing' by Lisa Ferranti
- 'The Alligator Girls of Shangri-La' by Rosaleen Lynch
- 'The Autumn Before Barbara Crosses the Berlin Wall' by Emma Phillips
- 'The Famine Road to Enniscrone' by Helen Kennedy
- 'The First Flowers of Spring are Often Yellow to Better Soak Warmth From a Weak Sun' by Judith Younger
- 'The Kiss' by S. A. Greene
- 'The Rain Brings Toads' by Michelle Collier
- 'The Summer She Turned Fifteen' by Anita Goodfellow
- 'The Summer Was Long Until It Wasn’t' by Phoebe Robertson
- 'The Throw, Not the Catch' by Ali McGrane
- 'The Wind Made Holes in My Skin' by Sudha Subramanian
- 'The Winter of Torvill and Dean' by Emily Devane
- 'Thirty Days We Had September' by Peter Burns
- 'This Is Not a Eulogy' by Salena Casha
- 'Uncle Rodney the Hyena' by Jane Salmons
- 'When Being Seduced by a Weather God Might Not Be Such a Good Thing' by Anne Howkins
- 'When Winter Was an Off-Season Tenant' by Emma Phillips
- 'Winter in the Cryolab' by Rebecca Field
- 'Your Skin Doesn’t Always Call Out to You' by Morgan Brie Johnson
- 'Zombie Season' by Dawn Miller