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You may know about FlashFlood, National Flash Fiction Day's curated online journal, but did you know that 2022 marks the fourth year of our Debut Flash Series?

Each year, we reserve slots for unpublished flash writers and, starting from 6:30 a.m. BST, we'll be publishing debut flash at half past the hour until midnight.  We've got over fifteen first flashes to celebrate today, and we're honoured and excited to be sharing them with you.

If you see 'Debut Flash' at the start of the title over at FlashFlood, it's an author's first published flash (and often their first published piece of any kind).

Happy Publication Day to all our debut authors, and to our former debut authors who have returned to publish with us again this year!

The Official NFFD 2022 Roadmap

The UK's National Flash Fiction Day starts at 00:01 BST on Saturday, 18 June 2022. Here's your handy guide to what's happening when....

Read with us!

For 24 hours straight starting at 00:01 BST on Saturday, 18 June, FlashFlood, NFFD's curated online journal, will be publishing one flash every 5 to 10 minutes over at NFFD Check in at half past the hour every hour from 7:30 am to midnight for our Debut Flash Series — new flashes written by unpublished writers.

Then, on Sunday, we'll post the latest in our Community Flash Series. This year, we catch up with the Writers Group from Wandsworth Carers Centre, a charity that provides support to unpaid carers.

Write with us!

Over at NFFD’s The Write-In, we’ll be posting a flash prompt every hour on the hour from 00:00 – 24:00 BST on National Flash Fiction Day. You'll then have 24 hours to submit your responses for a chance of publication. Publication of responses begins on 19 June 2022 and doesn't finish until the team is done reading through all the wondrous things you send us!

Learn with us!

Anita Goveas and Farhana Khalique are returning this year with a free, online workshop where they'll look at how we can add more depth to our flash fiction.  This event is free but spaces are limited and you must register in advance here to get the link.  For those who can't make it, we plan to publish a video of the workshop after the event.

Celebrate with us!

Join us from 7pm BST on Facebook for the virtual launch of And We Lived Happily Ever After, the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology. Four videos of readings from the anthology will be posted every quarter of an hour. The event is available to everyone, whether on Facebook or not. Join us for a chat and to view the videos here. Videos won't start appearing until 7:00pm BST on 18 June 2022, but they will be available to watch any time after that here.

And there's more....

Keep an eye on our News Feed for more flashy fun, including...

  • Videos of readings from Sybilla by Joanna Campbell, our first Novella-in-Flash winner (posting at 10am)
  • Lunchtime writing exercises provided by Michael Loveday (posting at noon)
  • A text-based mini-course on How To Write When You Don't Feel Like It from writer and performance-maker Rachel Jendrzejewski (posting at 2pm)

And there's even more still....

We're not the only ones celebrating flash this weekend!  These other groups are offering free flash activity this weekend and beyond....

  • New Zealand's National Flash Fiction Day is celebrating their ten year anniversary on Sunday, 19 June 2022.  They have a fantastic line-up of flash fiction fun and you can find the full schedule at their website, https://nationalflash.org/.
  • Retreat West are running a flash fiction treasure hunt on Twitter.  Rules will be posted at 10am on Saturday, 18 June 2022 on their Twitter feed at @RetreatWest, we're told.
  • Writers' HQ is offering a Five Days of Flash Challenge which will have you drafting five new stories in five days -- all for free!  You can find Writers' HQ at https://writershq.co.uk and information about the Five Days of Flash here.

(If you're running something flashy on or near National Flash Fiction Day, do let us know so we can spread the word.)

Huge thanks to all the volunteers who help make this happen, and to everyone who has submitted work to our projects, joined in at home, and chatted with us on Twitter.  We hope you'll enjoy this weekend full of reading, writing and celebrating flash.

Happy writing!

 

 

 

 

Cover of 'Sybilla' by Joanna Campbell

We are thrilled to announce that today is publication day for Joanna Campbell’s wonderful novella-in-flash, Sybilla. Joanna won our Novella-in-Flash Award back in January with her historical novella set in bookshop next to the Wall in West Berlin.

Sybilla is now officially on sale at the NFFD Bookshop.

All of us at National Flash Fiction Day love this masterclass in the novella-in-flash form, but you don't have to take our word for it.  Here's what others had to say about Sybilla:

This novella-in-flash is a little gem … seamless storytelling.

— Sophie van Llewyn, Novella-in-Flash judge and author of Bottled Good

Beautifully written, atmospheric, and impeccably paced this is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time. Campbell is a master of the form.

— Angela Readman, author of The Girls are Pretty Crocodiles

To celebrate, we've posted a couple videos of Joanna reading from Sybilla on our YouTube channel, and you can also read Jeanette Sheppard's Q&A with Joanna here.

Finally, to whet your appetite, we'll leave you with a little taste of what it's all about....

One August morning, the people of West Berlin wake to find their world divided. In the shadow of the Wall, Lara works in a bookshop where customers come and go, bringing regular news about loved ones trapped on the other side. Some strive to maintain connections via telephone and letters, while others plan a more desperate course of action. When a thunderstorm looms over the bookshop, a new customer takes shelter, bringing with him a story that Lara cannot ignore.

Sybilla is a story of separation, betrayal, and ultimately, the power of love.

 

2

Below Jeanette Sheppard talks to Joanna Campbell about Sybilla, winner of National Flash Fiction Day's first ever Novella-in-Flash Award. But before you read on, here’s a taste of what’s between the covers of Joanna’s fabulous book....

Cover of 'Sybilla' by Joanna CampbellOne August morning, the people of West Berlin wake to find their world divided. In the shadow of the Wall, Lara works in a bookshop where customers come and go, bringing regular news about loved ones trapped on the other side. Some strive to maintain connections via telephone and letters, while others plan a more desperate course of action. When a thunderstorm looms over the bookshop, a new customer takes shelter, bringing with him a story that Lara cannot ignore. Sybilla is a story of separation, betrayal, and ultimately, the power of love.

Jeanette: First of all, many congratulations again on winning the Novella-in-Flash Award! Sybilla is wonderful. I’ve read it many times now and each time I discover something new. Sybilla is set in West Berlin when the Wall is being built. Both sides of the Wall are vividly drawn, with the story growing out of the setting. Has setting always been important to you in your work?

Joanna: Thank you so much, Jeanette. I was deeply thrilled when Sybilla won the Novella-in-Flash Award, not least because it was such a pleasure to write, so I’m truly grateful to the NFFD team for running the competition and to judge, Sophie van Llewyn.

Setting can make a vital impact on the narrative. Throughout the years I have been writing, the stories which have proved more successful have often featured either an unusual or a distinctive setting, including several set in desolate areas of North Carolina. Having said that, it isn’t necessary for the location to be geographically specific. For example, I have also set stories in a hairdressing salon, a school science lab and inside a Chinese dragon. The important thing is for the setting to create a unique atmosphere and to shape the characters.

I enjoy writing about the Berlin Wall because of the scope for stories of loss, separation, loneliness, isolation and betrayal. And because it is easy to forget that you can wake up one ordinary morning to find your world divided and those you love out of reach.

The setting can be invented or real, but I do have to know the place. By this I mean I must feel a connection with it, either in my imagination or through reading. (For example, I have never actually been to North Carolina.) It doesn’t matter where or how the inspiration and the emotional link originate. It only matters that I feel confident and inspired. Wherever the setting might be, whether concrete or abstract, it must become the only possible place for my characters to develop.

Jeanette: I’ve heard several writers say that their novella-in-flash developed from a short story. I know this was the case with Sybilla. What persuaded you that this story would work as a novella-in-flash? And could you say a little about what you think are the joys and challenges of writing in this form?

Joanna: Sybilla began as a short story (6,500 words) written eight years ago. I submitted it to a competition, where a shortlisting gave me the confidence to submit it to a magazine. After it was published, I continued thinking about this story, sensing I could create something new and different while retaining the central characters and some plot elements. Eventually I decided to take it apart and completely re-write it as a novella-in-flash.

I developed the main characters, added finer points to the setting and re-tuned the plot. Then came the idea to introduce a small cast of minors, a kind of Greek chorus, to supply a background ‘commentary’. They served the main story in a small way, while also allowing the reader to step aside and see the broader picture of living with the Berlin Wall.

It was wonderful to have an existing piece to cultivate. First of all, I broke the clear-cut scenes apart, then cut these down even further, discarding some and reshaping those with the potential to become flash fiction. Several brand-new scenes were required as well, because after chopping up the original story, I could see bare bones begging to be fleshed out. By transforming the material into flash fiction I could dig deeper into the characters and strengthen the beating heart of the story.

The original Sybilla was in softer focus, the love story aspect at the forefront. For the novella-in-flash version, however, I wanted to illuminate the theme of betrayal. This meant changing the language, tone and, most importantly, the rhythm. They are quite different pieces of writing now, even though they tell a similar story.

The joy, and also the challenge, of writing a novella-in-flash is that it combines the verve and vigour of a flash fiction piece with the mellower unfolding of a longer story, gradually magnifying characters we meet at the most critical point in their lives. It also allows for recurrent motifs and delicate foreshadowing, which, story by story, amplify the theme at the heart of the novella.

Jeanette: This is your second novella-in-flash to be published through a competition, your first, A Safer Way to Fall, was published in How to Make a Window Snake (Ad Hoc Fiction). You have also written a novel Tying Down the Lion (Brick Lane Publishing) and a short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks (Ink Tears). Does your process differ from form to form? Do you have any tips for writers who are thinking about entering a novella-in-flash competition.

Joanna: My process is generally the same. I always edit constantly as I write and focus mostly on the rhythm of the sentences. I never set any word count targets. I’m only interested in the writing itself. The one difference is that I write short fiction in an extemporary way, but make a scene-by-scene plan for novels. Having a plan helps me keep track of the larger number of characters, but also clears a path through potential plot digressions. This makes me feel more secure about the novel’s progression and—hopefully—avoids me repeating the wretchedness of discarding tens of thousands of words which strayed off-course.

I think the best tip I can give for entering a novella-in-flash competition is to know your theme. Once you know it, you have a hook on which the entire novella-in-flash can safely swing. Keep it simple though. The hook should be sharply defined so you can preserve the truth of your story. The hook of Sybilla is betrayal: the people of Berlin are betrayed without warning by the overnight construction of a wall which divides their city. Suspended from the same hook as this ‘big-picture’ betrayal are the more intimate betrayals between the characters, some premeditated, others triggered by the division. The important point here is that both the individual flashes and the complete novella-in-flash all hang from this same hook. I didn’t need to repeat ‘betrayal’ in every paragraph, but I did have to create and maintain an atmosphere of growing distrust and doubt. Respect your hook and make sure your novella stays securely suspended.

Jeanette: Your beautiful painting is on the front cover of Sybilla. Did you create the image especially for your novella? As a fellow artist, I’m interested to know how you schedule your creative work.  Do you set aside time aside to paint?

Joanna: Thank you so much, Jeanette. Writing the novella inspired me to paint an abstract city skyline, although it was before I knew Sybilla had won the Novella-in-Flash Award. So I was overjoyed—and honoured—when you suggested using my own artwork and felt this particular painting was predestined for the front cover.

I try to set aside an hour or so for painting at the weekends. I find it helps my writing. It’s a thoughtful time. The imagination runs free and ideas can ferment. I also love making lots of mess.

Jeanette: You have a novel coming out soon, which is also set in Berlin, but this time in the East. Can you tell us about that?

Joanna: Yes, I’m utterly elated that Instructions for the Working Day will be published by Fairlight Books on August 31st. It is a contemporary psychological novel, in which Neil, a young English property developer, sets out to the former East Germany to renovate a marshland village left to deteriorate since the fall of the Berlin Wall. He lodges with Silke, who becomes his only friend within the enigmatic and antagonistic atmosphere of the village. As she prepares to unearth the truth about the trauma she suffered during the Cold War, Neil struggles to confront his own troubled past amid persistent warnings of danger ahead.

Jeanette: And finally, can you tell us about any useful items you keep on your writing desk

Joanna: Yes, my middle daughter made me an elegant woolen lady complete with stylish dress and pearls, known in our house as my kniterary agent.


Joanna CampbellJoanna Campbell is a full-time writer from the Cotswolds. Her short stories have won first place in the Exeter Writers competition, the Bath Short Story Award Local Prize, the London Short Story Prize, the Magic Oxygen Literary Prize and the Retreat West Short Story Prize.

Joanna’s flash-fiction won second place in the 2017 Bridport Prize, for which her short stories have been shortlisted many times.

Her novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was a runner-up in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award and published in How To Make A Window Snake (Ad Hoc Fiction). Her short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill University Prize.

Her novel, Instructions for the Working Day, will be published in August 2022 (Fairlight Books).

 

Cover of 'Sybilla' by Joanna Campbell

As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations last year, National Flash Fiction Day launched the Novella-in-Flash Award. Our inaugural judge, Sophie van Llewyn, chose Joanna Campbell’s wonderful Sybilla as the winner.

We are excited to announced that Sybilla will be published on Thursday, 16 June 2022.

Here’s a flavour of what it’s all about....

One August morning, the people of West Berlin wake to find their world divided. In the shadow of the Wall, Lara works in a bookshop where customers come and go, bringing regular news about loved ones trapped on the other side. Some strive to maintain connections via telephone and letters, while others plan a more desperate course of action. When a thunderstorm looms over the bookshop, a new customer takes shelter, bringing with him a story that Lara cannot ignore. Sybilla is a story of separation, betrayal, and ultimately, the power of love.

The beautiful painting on the cover was also created by Joanna!

Sybilla will be available to order from the 16th June at the National Flash Fiction Day Bookshop.  In the meantime, you can read more about Joanna and the full judge's report here.

National Flash Fiction Day 2022 is less than two weeks away and we're getting ready for another weekend of flashy fun.  We're super excited to launch our next National Flash Fiction Anthology on 18 June, but we thought we'd give you a sneak peak of the cover beforehand.

Huge thanks to our Artist-in-Residence Jeanette Sheppard and to anthology author Damhnait Monaghan whose flash title was chosen as this year's anthology title.

Without further ado, we're delighted to Introduce And We Lived Happily Ever After: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2022, edited by Karen Jones and Christopher Drew!

And We Lived Happily Ever After

And We Lived Happily Ever After will be available to order very soon...watch this space!

 

Anita Goveas and Farhana Khalique are joining us again this year for another free workshop to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day 2022!

In this free, online workshop, Anita and Farhana will discuss how to add more depth into your flash fiction.

This event is free but spaces are limited and you must register in advance here.  For those who can't make it, we plan to publish a video of the workshop after the event.


Farhana Khalique is a writer, voiceover artist and teacher from south-west London. Her writing has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2022, 100 Voices, This is Our Place, and more. She has been shortlisted for The Asian Writer Short Story Prize and she is a former Word Factory Apprentice. Farhana is also a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly and at Litro, and she is the editor of Desi Reads. Find Farhana @HanaKhalique and www.farhanakhalique.com

Anita Goveas is British-Asian and based in London. She’s on the editorial team at Flashback Fiction, an editor at Mythic Picnic’s twitter zine, and she’s an editor for the Flash Flood. She is one of the teachers on Dahlia Publishing’s ‘A Brief Pause’ writer development programme and she taught a workshop at the ‘Stay at Home Lit Fest’. Her debut flash collection Families and Other Natural Disasters was published by Reflex Press in Sept 2020.

Find her at @coffeeandpaneer and https://coffeeandpaneer.wordpress.com/

Looks like thunderstorms on the horizon...

It's that time of year again!  Submissions for FlashFlood, NFFD's online journal, will open for one week only, starting this Sunday.  The submission window is from 00:01 BST on 1 May to 23:59 BST on 7 May 2022. We're looking for pieces of up to 300 words on any topic, in any style.

Full submissions guidelines are available on the FlashFlood website and you can submit via our free-to-use submission manager, Duosuma. (You will need to register for a free account, but no subscription or fees are required.)

Please note that we have two separate submission calls, one for general submissions and one for our series of special slots reserved for new writers.

All accepted pieces will be published during the 2022 Flood on 18 June 2022, starting at 00:01 and lasting until 23:59 BST.  During the Flood, we'll publish a new flash at every five to ten minutes for 24 hours straight.

Our team is looking forward to reading your work....

 

After reading oodles of brilliant stories on the theme of FREEDOM, Karen Jones and Chris Drew have finalised their selections for the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and for the first-ever Editors' Choice Awards.

Below is the list of the 50 stories that will appear in this year's anthology, alongside the 2022 Microfiction Competition Winners.  We will be contacting everyone officially via email, so you should hear from us soon.  Congratulations to all the authors listed below!

Special congratulations to our two inaugural Editors' Choice Award Winners:

  • Chris Drew chose Coins by Richard Barr
  • Karen Jones chose Trout Prince by Rachel Gough

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!

2022 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Line Up

  • 29 Kumquats by Anne Summerfield
  • A Day Out by Catherine Ogston
  • A Parley at the Mouth of the Underworld by Nicole Ong
  • A Sin to See Through Glass by Rosaleen Lynch
  • All the Things You Know by Julia Smith
  • Ancrene Wise by Cate Holness
  • And We Lived Happily Ever After by Damhnait Monaghan
  • Angel wings, boxed. As New by Jackie Morris
  • Callisto by Angela Huskisson
  • Coins by Richard Barr
  • Come on Down by Amy Barnes
  • Curriculum Vitae by Audrey Niven
  • Don’t Look Back by Sherri Turner
  • Down to Earth by Jude Higgins
  • Dublin by Hannah Saal
  • Free at Eighty by David Galef
  • Freedom From and Freedom to by Edward Barnfield
  • Freedom of Information by Jeanette Greaves
  • Freedom of the Fells by Christine Sturt
  • From the Rubble, 1945 by Emma Venables
  • Good Luck Lenny by Sara Hills
  • Herman’s Arrest by Linda Rowland-Buckley
  • How to Hook a Heart by Judy Darley
  • How to Make a Tote Bag and Heal Your Heart by Joan Taylor-Rowan
  • Kite by Cathy Lennon
  • Kolkata 1884 by Jonaki Ray
  • Mine Was a Blessed Childhood by Marina Sofia
  • My Love is Like a Fever etc. by Michela Esposito
  • Neither yes nor no by Susy Churchill
  • Our Sons Squirm as we Straighten Their Collars by Malina Douglas
  • Packing Diamonds by Nancy Freund
  • Peaches and Sour Apple by Rosie Garland
  • Pursed Lips and Silences by S A Greene
  • Radical Change by Hannah Smith
  • Some Spark of Us by Peter Burns
  • Temporal Dilation by Fay Brown
  • The Butterfly Effect by Hannah Storm
  • The Happy Baby by Cheryl Markosky
  • The Innocence of Trees by Ruth Skrine
  • The Leaving by Sarah Masters
  • The Night Bus to Upstate by Roberta Beary
  • The Rookery by Rachel Gough
  • The visual merchandiser will Inspire with fresh takes on the hottest
  • trends by Lucy Goldring
  • Things the Adverts Said by Rebecca Field
  • Three Lies by Annika Neukirch
  • Too Close Too Low by Rachael Dunlop
  • Trout Prince by Rachel Gough
  • Untamed at Last by Gaynor Jones
  • What We Did When We Knew It Was the End by Rachel Clarke
  • X+Y=Something by Yasmina Din Madden

And the results are in!

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

  • First Prize: 'Just a Word to the Snowblind' by Jan Kaneen
  • Second Prize: 'Why my mother-in-law sits in the corner sucking leftover chicken bones' by Marie Gethins
  • Third Prize: 'Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw, 1993' by Sherry Morris
  • Third Prize: 'Things We Learned About Sarajevo During the Siege' by Emma Phillips
  • Highly Commended: 'birds of paradise (see also: dumb, stupid birds)' by Pippa O’Driscoll
  • Highly Commended: 'Fat Caterpillars' by Pippa O’Driscoll
  • Highly Commended: 'Here the Stream Floods' by Andrew Deathe
  • Highly Commended: 'Richter Scale 8' by Slawka G. Scarso
  • Highly Commended: 'Siren’s Song' by Hannah Whiteoak
  • Highly Commended: 'When Grief Auditions' by Tommy Dean

The winning and highly commended stories can be read here and will appear in the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology.

Thank you again to our four judges, Christopher Allen, Joanna Campbell, Tracy Fells and Damhnait Monaghan.  Their job this year was extremely difficult, with an extra round of voting required to reach our final ten. In the end, they were unable to separate the two stories vying for third place and we felt the fairest thing would be to award two third place prizes.

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.