Author: Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Huge thanks to Anita Goveas and Farhana Khalique for their fantastic workshop yesterday.  If you missed out, then you're in luck:

Click here for a recording of today's session.

You'll need to enter the password 4jHM&2rN to access the workshop.

We are truly grateful to Anita and Farhana for offering their annual National Flash Fiction Day workshop free of charge for several years running.  All NFFD projects are volunteer run, this included.  If you enjoy these free workshops, do follow Anita and Farhana to keep up with the workshops they run throughout the year. A little bird tells me they have an exciting one planned for October, though details haven't yet been announced.

You can follow Anita and Farhana on Twitter at @coffeeandpaneer & @HanaKhalique. 

Thank you again to Anita and Farhana for volunteering their time and expertise to the flash community this weekend!

This year, The Write-In is adding in a little spice to its prompt writing challenge. Over the course of National Flash Fiction Day, we're publishing one prompt per hour for a total of 25 prompts.

You have until Sunday 25 June at 23:59 BST to submit them for possible publication at The Write-In, and for the first time this year you can also claim a virtual badge for each prompt you finish, as well as for a few other tasks. You have a week to do so, until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 2 July. You can see the full list of badges here and claim you prompt badges using our badgifier. It's all on the honour-system, but bad publication will most certainly befall anyone who tries to fool our badgifier....

Finally, if you are here looking for the special National Flash Fiction Day 2023 badge from this website, you can find it by clicking here.... Congratulations -- you're one step closer to being able to legitimately claim the Complete Set badge of 2023!

The Official NFFD 2023 Roadmap

What are you planning for NFFD?

Huge thanks...

We're delighted to introduce the title and cover of our newest anthology, Scratching the Sands: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2023.  It will launch on 24 June 2023, but you can pre-order here.

Thanks to Christine Collinson, author of the eponymous story and to our artist-in-residence Jeanette Sheppard who provided the cover image.

We're excited to share the anthology itself with you later this month....

To celebrate National Flash Fiction Day 2023, the brilliant Anita Goveas and Farhana Khalique are offering a FREE flash prompt workshop on Saturday, 24 June 2023 from 09:30 - 10:30 BST.  The workshop is free, but you'll need to sign up in advance as places are limited.  Details and the sign-up form can be found here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/national-flash-fiction-day-flash-fiction-workshop-tickets-634702190337

If you miss it or can't make the time, we'll post a link to the session on our website so you can enjoy in your own time.

You can follow Anita and Farhana on Twitter at @coffeeandpaneer & @HanaKhalique.  HUGE thanks to both for their generosity and expertise!

We are delighted to announce that FlashFlood will be open for submissions from 12:01 a.m. BST on Sunday, 30 April to 23:59 BST on Saturday, 6 May.

You can read our submission guidelines here, and read about this year's editors here.

We're looking for submissions of up to 300 words on any theme.  (Shorter pieces are very welcome; there is no minimum word count.)  We are happy to read up to three pieces per author per year.

Previously published work is fine as long as you give us full publication details.  We prefer it if you don't send us anything published after 2021 as we don't want to steal any thunder from your original publisher.  We consider all previously unpublished pieces for award nominations; we nominate for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and Best of the Net.

Please note that we do not accept AI generated work at this time.  Whilst we appreciate that AI can come up with some very interesting things, we have a very human team of editors volunteering their precious and limited time.  We simply don't have the resources to deal with a deluge of AI generated work.  Please be kind to our editors by only submitting work that you yourself have written.

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

And the results are in!

Huge congratulations to our winning and highly commended authors (listed
alphabetically by story title):

• First Prize: ‘All my lovers’ by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar
• Second Prize: ‘Shouting in Silence’ by Fiona Barker
• Joint Third Prize: ‘The Boy in the Leopard Skin Shorts’ by Alan S.
  Falkingham
• Joint Third Prize: ‘Afterbirth’ by Sally Simon
• Highly Commended: ‘Arthur Rimbaud Speaks to His Shadow’ by Kik Lodge
• Highly Commended: ‘Reds’ by Sudha Balagopal
• Highly Commended: ‘The Fate of Small Creatures’ by Jan Kaneen
• Highly Commended: ‘The Return of a Native’ by Caroline Greene
• Highly Commended: ‘The Song of the Thieving Magpie’ by Liz Meyer
• Highly Commended: ‘The Tsar’ by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

The winning and highly commended stories can be read here and will appear in the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology.

Thank you again to our four judges: Tim Craig, Amanda Huggins, Fiona J
Mackintosh and Johanna Robinson.

Congratulations again to all our prize-winning and highly commended authors, and to all those who were shortlisted. And, a big thank you to everyone who entered this year’s competition and trusted us with their stories.