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And the results are in!

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

  • First Prize: ‘A Civil War’ by Sarah Freligh
  • Second Prize: ‘Too Late for Lullabies’ by Martha Lane
  • Third Prize: ‘The Last Summer’ by Dawn Miller
  • Highly Commended: ‘Bible Outtake #1: “A Rabies Scare in West Virginia Turns Out to Be Raccoons Drunk on Fermented Crab Apples”’ by Tracie Renee
  • Highly Commended: ‘Bubbles’ by Sarah Oakes
  • Highly Commended: ‘Caleb’ by Ciel Stynes
  • Highly Commended: ‘Lunch Lady’ by Holly Brandon
  • Highly Commended: ‘Us Minus You’ by Coleman Bigelow
  • Highly Commended: ‘Why I Threw Up on the Whale Watching Tour’ by Elena Zhang
  • Highly Commended: ‘9,125 Days of Sambhar, Because Like Biryani, Sambhar is Also an Emotion’ by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar

The winning and highly commended stories can be read here and will appear in the 2025 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology.

Thank you again to our four judges: Sudha Balagopal, Rebecca Field, James Montgomery and Sherry Morris.

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.

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

This year, we were thrilled to receive 551 entries to the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition.

Our judges, Sudha Balagopal, Rebecca Field, James Montogomery and Sherry Morris had the difficult job of whittling down the stories to a shortlist of 26. This was no easy task and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work and for the speed and conscientiousness with which they carried out the judging.

It isn’t easy to tell a story in a 100 words, yet we were blown away by the variety of themes, subjects and styles we saw in the submissions. Thank you to everyone who sent in their work; we appreciated the chance to read your flash.

If you see your flash below, feel free to tell everyone, but as judging is still in place please do not reveal your title.

Now, without further delay, our 26 shortlisted stories are:

 

  • 21st December 1916
  • 9,125 days of sambhar, because like Biryani, Sambhar is also an emotion
  • A Boat Afloat
  • A Civil War
  • Any Beach He’s There
  • Bible Outtake #1: “A Rabies Scare in West Virginia Turns Out to Be Raccoons Drunk on Fermented Crab Apples” 
  • Bubbles
  • Caleb
  • Camera in the Tehran Metro
  • Coal, Fire, Steam – a Proper Man’s Life
  • DE-SPIC-ABLE
  • Doing the Mexican Wave at the Village Hall Watch Party
  • Feral
  • Flotsam
  • In The Hood
  • Jackpot
  • Lunch Lady
  • Rambling
  • Shopping Trolley, Unreturned
  • The Aquarium
  • The Colour of Grief
  • The Last Summer
  • To buy a groom
  • Too Late for Lullabies
  • Us Minus You
  • Why I Threw Up on the Whale Watching Tour

National Flash Fiction Day is OPEN for Anthology and Microfiction Competitions submissions until 23:59 GMT on Saturday, 15 February 2025!

This is a little reminder that submissions close TOMORROW if you'd like to submit flash for consideration in our annual anthology and our microfiction competition.  Word limits are short, so there's still time to write, edit and polish something if you'd like to submit!  We are excited to read work from anyone and everyone, all around the world.

For our Microfiction Competition, we're looking for flash of up to 100 words.  There is no theme.  Your work will be read by judges Sudha Balagopal, Rebecca Field, James Montgomery and Sherry Morris.  Winners and runners-up will receive cash prizes and be published online and in our print/ebook anthology.  Full submission details can be found here and you can read more about our judges here.

For the 2025 Anthology, we're looking for flash up to 500 words on the theme of SEASONS.  Your work will be read by editors Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky.  Selected work will be published in our 2025 print/ebook anthology and be considered for our Editors' Choice Awards which come with a £50 prize.  You can read our submission details here.

If you're looking for inspiration for your anthology, our artist-in-residence Jeanette Sheppard has recorded an ekphrastic workshop that you can follow along at your own pace.  The workshop is free and you can find the video and resources here:

www.bit.ly/nffd2025workshop

Our Anthology and Microfiction Competition teams look forward to reading your work!

National Flash Fiction Day is OPEN for submissions for our annual Anthology and Microfiction Competition until Saturday, 15 February 2025!

This is a little reminder that there is only a week left to submit your flash for consideration in our annual anthology and our microfiction competition -- plenty of time for you to draft something new or polish something up.  We are excited to read work from anyone and everyone, all around the world.

For our Microfiction Competition, we're looking for flash of up to 100 words.  There is no theme.  Your work will be read by judges Sudha Balagopal, Rebecca Field, James Montgomery and Sherry Morris.  Winners and runners-up will receive cash prizes and be published online and in our print/ebook anthology.  Full submission details can be found here and you can read more about our judges here.

For the 2025 Anthology, we're looking for flash up to 500 words on the theme of SEASONS.  Your work will be read by editors Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky.  Selected work will be published in our 2025 print/ebook anthology and be considered for our Editors' Choice Awards which come with a £50 prize.  You can read our submission details here.

If you're looking for inspiration for your anthology, our artist-in-residence Jeanette Sheppard has recorded an ekphrastic workshop that you can follow along at your own pace.  The workshop is free and you can find the video and resources here:

Our Anthology and Microfiction Competition teams look forward to reading your work!

 

Welcome to the sixth and final instalment in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with guest editor Cheryl Markosky who is co-editing this year's anthology. They discuss roots, influences and dinner parties, as well as Cheryl's advice for those submitting work to this year's anthology....

DS: Firstly, thank you so much for agreeing to be this year’s Co-editor. This year’s theme is SEASONS. Do you have any thoughts on what kind of flash you would like to see in the inbox, or how writers should approach the theme?

CM: I'm delighted to be co-editing with Karen Jones, who I've always admired as a writer and a person (she's terrific fun!). I'd like to see new approaches when tackling this year's theme. There are well-worn tropes in flash writing – many of them pretty gloomy – so it would be interesting to see people take risks with form and well, have a go at irreverent, surreal and humorous stories. I'm also a big fan of what I call "quiet flashes" – little slices of life that don't appear all that momentous, but underneath there's a lot going on.

DS: You are a Canadian writer, living part of the year in Nevis in the Caribbean and part of the year in the UK. Does where you are living at the time affect the kind of story you write? Yes, totally.

CM: I write best on Nevis, where there's less to distract me. Sometimes, monkeys creep into my work (we have an awful lot of green vervet monkeys on the island), like a story I had published about a woman breastfeeding a monkey (don't ask). And when I'm in London I love observing city life. Old men always sitting at the same table in McDonalds cropped up in one story. Oddly enough though, Canada's fighting its way into my writing now, even though I'm remiss in going back to my homeland as much as I should. You can take the girl out of the Crowsnest Pass (where I grew up in the Rockies), but you can't take the Crowsnest Pass out of the girl!

DS: Can you remember when you first encountered flash fiction?

CM: I stumbled upon flash fiction years back, without knowing it really, when I had a micro-story published by Reader's Digest. Then during lockdown, I was going a bit mad and thought about creative writing. I remembered Jude Higgins from a writing group I attended a couple of times in Bath and tracked her down online. I was hugely lucky to then become a member of her Thursday writing group alongside several flash fiction megastars. I was blown away by the power of teensy stories that punch above their weight coming from the pens of all these amazing people.

DS: If you could choose three writers to have round for dinner, who would they be? And what would you cook (or order in)?

CM: Elizabeth Strout, Katherine Heiney, Niall Williams. And if I'm also allowed a ghost, Alice Munro. I'd cook favourites from my Canadian-Polish-Italian childhood, such as spaghetti with meatballs, pierogis, cabbage rolls and Saskatoon Pie, all washed down with vodka and A&W root beer. I'd ask Stanley Tucci to help serve the food while reading extracts from his new book, What I Ate in One Year, which I reckon would go well with the meatballs.

DS: You are a freelance journalist, writer and theatre critic. This must keep you rather busy. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

CM: I race around doing theatre reviews in southern England and London, as well as corporate journalism on property and travel. When I do get spare time I do yoga, swim, cycle, read and drag my family to art galleries (I studied Art History with the Open University). I belong to two book clubs, which is probably one book club too many. I'm also an avid fan of BBC Radio 4's The Archers, the longest running daily soap in the world. Reading this back, I realise I could be a strong candidate for having the most boring dating profile ever!

 


Born in Calgary, Canada, Cheryl Markosky now splits her time between London and Wiltshire in the UK, and the Caribbean. She writes flash and short stories alongside working as a journalist and theatre reviewer. Cheryl's writing can be found in EllipsisZine, New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Maudlin House, The Molotov Cocktail, Janus Literary, The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, Urban Tree Festival, WalkListenCreate (where she was writer-in-residence), and National Flash Fiction Day and Flash Fiction Festival anthologies. You can find out more about Cheryl on her website www.cherylmarkosky.com, and on X @cherylmarkosky and Facebook cheryl.markosky.

If you missed last Thursday's free Ekphrastic Workshop with National Flash Fiction Day's Artist-in-Residence Jeanette Sheppard, fear not we have you covered!
Here is the link to a folder with a video of the workshop and a document with Jeanette's links and resources shared during the presentation:
We attempted to record last Thursday's live session but hit a little snag when the video failed to finalise.  However, Jeanette very kindly offered to re-record the workshop.  In a slight departure from the live event, we've not recorded during the writing windows, so you might wish to have a timer to hand. Jeanette will let you know when to pause the video and how long you might wish to give yourself to respond to her prompts.  Huge thanks again to Jeanette for sharing her expertise not once but twice!
This workshop is free for all, so feel free to send the link to anyone who might be interested.
And, if you're using this video to help inspire a piece of writing for submission to NFFD's 'Seasons' themed anthology, don't forget that the deadline is 15 February 2025.
Happy Writing!

Welcome to the fifth instalment in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with National Flash Fiction Day's Karen Jones who is co-editing the 2025 anthology alongside this year's guest editor, Cheryl Markosky. They discuss humour, inspirations, and Karen's top tip for those approaching themed submission calls....

Photograph of Karen JonesDS: This is your fourth year of co-editing the NFFD anthology and it’s been brilliant having you on the team. I know you always have lots of advice for people writing flash, whether it be 100 words, 500 words or longer, but if you had to pick only one piece of advice for writers, based on your experience of reading so many themed anthology submissions, what would it be?

KJ: Strive for originality. Themes tend to lead people down familiar paths, so we’ll get lots of stories on the most obvious subjects connected to the theme. Try to do something different, something only you could write. I often suggest making a list of the first words that come into your mind when you see a theme – then delete them and start again, digging deeper, going in directions others may not have considered.

DS: There is a great deal of humour in your work. Are there any flash fictions that you remember made you laugh out loud?

KJ: Debra A Daniel tends to crack me up. I loved this one at Bath Flash Fiction: Grand Canyon Official Form 477D. Oh, and Damhnait Monaghan’s 'And We Lived Happily Ever After', which was the title story for our 2022 anthology, is a superb example of humour.

DS: Have you always written fiction? If not, can you remember what inspired you to start?

KJ: I dabbled in poetry, briefly, but, yes, almost always fiction. I wrote short stories even when I was at school. I’ve always been an avid reader and always a daydreamer, so there were always stories in my head. I started writing with a view to actually submitting work when my sons were small and I was a full-time carer for my mother, so I was at home most of the time – it was a kind of escape from the realities of the day.

DS: Were you a reader as a child? If so, did you have a favourite author?

KJ: Yeah, I always had at least one book on the go. I was obsessed with a Scottish writer called Ruth M. Arthur. Her books had a supernatural edge to them and I loved that at the time. Unfortunately, they are no longer in print. I wish I could read them now and find out if they really were that good.

DS: Is there a flash fiction writer who has influenced your own writing? Or one who you particularly admire?

KJ: Not influenced as such – unless we count creative writing teachers who’ve helped along the way, in particular that would be Kathy Fish. But admire, yes, lots. Off the top of my head I’d say Sharon Telfer, Fiona MacKintosh, Sara Hills, Elisabeth Ingram Wallace and Tracey Slaughter. I’ve never read anything other than excellence from them and they make me want to be a better writer.

 


Karen Jones is a flash and short fiction writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story Small Mercies was included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and second prize in Fractured Lit’s Micro Fiction Competition. Her work has been Highly Commended/shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction, Bath Short Story Award and many others. Her first novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her second, Burn It All Down, is published by Arroyo Seco Press. She is an editor for National Flash Fiction Day anthology.

 

Happy New Year from all of us at National Flash Fiction Day!

Are you thinking about entering a flash for this year’s anthology? Maybe this year’s ‘Seasons’ theme fired you up, but now you’ve faltered or you’ve just not had time to get going.

Come and join Jeanette Sheppard, NFFD's Artist-in-Residence, in this friendly online workshop. Jeanette has chosen several pieces of art to start your brain whirring.

This is a generative workshop and will be fast-paced to help over-thinking, something many of us experience. The aim is to get something down: it might be a first draft, a collection of words or the bare bones of an idea. It's suitable for anyone new to flash and more experienced writers. We’d love to see you there!

This workshop will be delivered via Zoom and a recording will be made if you can't attend on the day.

Date: Thursday, 30 January 2024
Time: 7:30 - 8:30pm GMT

Tickets are free, but you'll need to reserve a place here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/national-flash-fiction-day-ekphrastic-workshop-tickets-1145464247399

Our Microfiction Competition or Anthology submission calls are open until 15 February so there's plenty of time to draft, polish and submit

 

 

 

Welcome to the second of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Rebecca Field, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about favourite authors, childhood reading lists, her advice for those entering the Microfiction Competition, and more....

DS: You’ve twice been Highly Commended in the NFFD Micro Fiction Competition and I wondered if you particularly enjoy writing to a limit of 100 words? Do you have any tips for entrants to the competition? Or things to avoid?

RF: In answer to the first part of this question, I would have to say that I do find micros really tricky to write and it wasn’t a length I was initially drawn to. Having some success in this competition has encouraged me to try writing them more often and I am always amazed by the winning entries, how much story can be packed into so few words. In general I prefer to write slightly longer flash pieces, however I love to support the UK National Flash Fiction Day events and so I enjoy the challenge of writing micros and entering each year if possible.

I think in terms of tips for entrants, many of these will have been discussed in detail elsewhere and by previous judges so I won’t try to cover too many here. The importance of the title for a micro is often mentioned and I think this is a very important one, as well as the sense of it being a complete story. I also like to see humour in flash and so this is definitely something I would be looking out for, but a micro that is purely a joke with a punchline or an anecdote rather than a story would also be something to avoid.

DS: Is there a book or story from your childhood that makes your heart leap a little when you think about it? Has your taste changed? For instance, if you were a fan of a particular type of novel as a child, is that something you still enjoy?

RF: This is a tough question, so many come to mind! Stereotypically for a writer, I was one of those children who spent a lot of time in libraries and bookshops, reading a lot of different books from a young age. Some early favourites were things like Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Gerald Durrell, then later stuff like Judy Blume mixed in with sci-fi stuff like John Wyndham, Orson Scott Card and Douglas Adams, all sorts really. I think that today I don’t read as much sci-fi as I did as a teen but I definitely like something perhaps with a speculative or dystopian angle that’s also well written, people like Emily St John Mandel, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, and Murakami are favourites I would keep coming back to. I of course now also read a lot of short fiction collections which wasn’t something I did as a child.

DS: If you could spend a day with one author (living or dead), who would you choose?

RF: George Saunders. He just seems to be such a nice chap and a great teacher. I would hope for some of his genius to rub off on me. I love his Story Club newsletters on Substack, though it can be tough trying to keep up with reading all the great stories and newsletters that are out there.

DS: Do you play music while you write — and, if so, do you have a favourite piece or artist?

RF: Occasionally I might play some light classical music, but in general I prefer quiet when writing and find that less distracting.

DS: Do you only write flash or are there any other forms that you enjoy writing?

RF: I mainly write flash but recently have been working more on a few short stories I’ve been tinkering with for quite some time. They seem to take forever to finish and I feel much more out of my depth with them than I do with shorter pieces, so much more space to mess things up! I also have a half-written novella in flash that is currently lying dormant but may be resurrected at some stage.

 


Rebecca Field is a short fiction writer from Derbyshire, UK. Her work has appeared in several NFFD anthologies and she has twice been highly commended in the NFFD micro competition. She has also been published online by The Phare, Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Milk Candy Review and Ellipsis Zine among others. Tweets at @RebeccaFwrites.