Submissions for the 2025 anthology are OPEN from
1 December 2024 - 15 February 2025
2025 Theme
The theme for this year’s anthology is SEASONS. What does the theme mean to you? It could be seasons of the year evoking tales of spring, summer, autumn and winter, or maybe a season of love, a season of war, a season of… whatever takes your fancy. Or will you take a different route and season food with herbs and spices, or season wood for burning? Feel free to interpret the theme however you wish, in 500 words or fewer.
This year's anthology will be edited by Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky. You can read more about them here.
All selected pieces will be considered for one of two Editor's Choice Awards. The 2025 editors will each select one piece from the accepted stories to receive a £50 prize.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit work via Duosuma, our submission manager.
The Fine Print
We do accept simultaneous submissions for the National Flash Fiction Day anthology. If your story is published elsewhere, please withdraw your anthology submission immediately by informing us via email.
We only accept unpublished work. We do not class stories posted on private blogs, social media pages, or online groups (such as in workshopping forums, online courses etc.), as previously published. Stories published on public blogs or social media are ineligible.
Submissions are open internationally. Although we anonymise submissions, we actively encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented groups, such as BAME, LGBTQ+, and disabled writers.
All authors who have a story accepted for the anthology will receive a free print copy upon publication.
We cannot accept stories that include copyrighted song lyrics. Please do not send us work with lyrics unless those lyrics are clearly in the public domain.
Please do not send us AI-generated work; at present, we are only considering original work written by humans.
Rights
National Flash Fiction Day require non-exclusive first publication rights and incidental promotional rights. National Flash Fiction Day retains the unrestricted right to publish selected stories in its anthologies, in print and online, and in any relevant promotional material, and will retain copyright and economic rights for the anthology as a whole.
All rights for individual stories revert back to their respective author upon publication.
The author is free to republish their work, either in part, as a whole, or in an altered form, wherever they like after National Flash Fiction Day have published the anthology.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us via email with “RIGHTS” in the subject line: nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com
Please note that submission of work by an author to the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology shall be considered acceptance of the full guidelines above.
Data Collection
We collect your name and email for the purpose of informing you about the status of your submission. If your story is accepted, we collect your name, email and address for the purpose of sending you your contributor’s copy of the anthology, and for nominating work to writing awards (such as Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize). For some award nominations, we are required to pass your email address along to the publisher. If you would prefer us not to do this, please mention this when you submit your work so that we don’t consider your piece for an award that requires us to pass along your details.
Additional Support
With projects like this, breaking even is always a challenge.
We would like to keep submissions free in 2025, but to do so, we need your support. Please consider buying a book from our back catalogue or donating a small amount via our PayPal link to help keep this project going.
If you would like to help in other ways, please email us: nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com.
Thank you for your support.