Category: News

We have the same name, the same love of flash, and the same difficulties this year running our annual events due to Covid-19.  We're a completely separate organisation from National Flash Fiction Day New Zealand, but this year we're joining forces to celebrate flash fiction throughout the month.

Although most of NFFD UK's online celebration is condensed into this weekend, we'll be joining NFFD NZ for their events, which welcome flash fiction readers and writers from around the world. They are primarily celebrating on 22 June, but there are a number of things to look out for throughout the month.

Here's what's happening, though do check their events page for updates:

Online readings

• YouTube reading series – featuring new books, journal editors, youth readers, NFFD judges past and present, Bath novella-in-flash readings, City Chairs and more
• Micro Madness – June 1-22 micro readings from our annual international micro competition, with lockdown micros and no-theme micros – two per day!
• Book Day – June 15, celebrating books published in 2020 from around the world

Panel discussions

• The Language of Flash: A Roundtable with Journal Editors Around the World June 13, 9am NZ time – including:· Christopher Allen, Smokelong Quarterly (Germany)
  · Nuala O’Connor, Splonk (Ireland)
  · Grant Faulkner, 100 Words (US)
  · Meg Pokrass, New Flash Fiction Review (US)
  · Vaughan Rapatahana, Flash Frontier (Aotearoa New Zealand)
• Imagination Unbound: Five Women on the Poetic Narrative Form June 14, 4pm NZ time– including:· Helen Rickerby, author of How to live (AUP 2019)
  · Anne Kennedy, author of Moth Hour (AUP 2019)
  · Nod Ghosh, author of Filthy Sucre (Truth Serum Press 2020)
  · Diane Brown, author of Every now and then I have another child (OUP 2020)
  · Gail Ingram, author of Contents Under Pressure (Pukeko Publishing 2019)
• Best Small Fictions and Best Microfictions: an international reading June 20, 9am NZ time: a sampling of readers from the 2020 anthologies
• Youth Voices June 21, 9am NZ time – readings and discussion from youth entrants in the 2020 NFFD NZ youth competiton

The June 22 Online Awards Celebration
livestreamed!

We are also excited to see so many international writers in the volume this year, including the following from New Zealand: Johanna Aitchison, Anita Arlov, Melanie Dixon, Jan FitzGerald, Alison Glenny, Kamala Jackson, Heather McQuillan, Nod Ghosh, Cherllisha Silva, Kirsten Strom and Iona Winter. BSF will be released later this year -- watch for news!

More about Best Small Fictions on The Sonder Press website.

Join us from 7 – 10 pm BST for the virtual launch of the 2020 NFFD Anthology, Root, Branch, Tree.

Readings from the anthology will be posted on our YouTube channel and we’ll be celebrating with chat and virtual toasts on Twitter and our dedicated Facebook event. All welcome!

And of course, don't forget to pre-order the print edition or buy an ebook at the NFFD Bookshop!

National Flash Fiction Day has been celebrating flash since midnight, but Small Green Shoots is way ahead of us -- they have been celebrating all week!

National Flash Fiction Day and Small Green Shoots are sharing a common 'family' theme this year, and we're excited to see all the fantastic new work that has come out of this intensive week of creativity. Do have a look at everything that's going on; you can find links to everything via Instagram @smallgreenshoots and Twitter @smallgreensh00t.

Small Green Shoots is an arts organisation dedicated to running transformational arts projects to improve life chances for young people.  It was founded in 2009 with aim of giving young people from disadvantaged backgrounds an opportunity to engage with music and the arts, and to use these experiences as a springboard for their future. You can find out more about their story, their work, and ways to support them here.

Huge congratulations to everyone involved in Flash Fiction Week; let the celebrations continue!

 

 

 

We had to cancel our NFFD 2020 live event, so we've brought our celebration online. In our Flash Feast series, we've invited some flash superstars to share some videos and posts over the course of the day.

In our second Flash Feast, Jonathan Cardew of Bending Genres shares some insights about fun and form in flash...

 

Eighteen Bullet Points, or (re)Forming Flash,
Making It Not Crap

by Jonathan Cardew

• If you are like me and you’re rubbish at writing and you’ve got nothing of real worth to say and you’re just counting down the minutes on this earth waiting for inspiration, then you might just need to form the crap out of your flash.

• By form, I mean structure. By structure, I mean a straightjacket.

• Paragraphs are a straightjacket.

• But we’re bored of paragraphs, aren’t we?

• When we write a well-structured paragraph, with a nice lead in and logical close, we want to kill ourselves, don’t we?

• Every woman and her labradoodle has written a paragraph.

• We are not every woman and her mixed breed canine.

• So, we’re going to blow the pants off form!

• We’re going to do what Jennifer Fliss does in Barren Magazine and we’re going to write a story on the side of a cleaning product bottle.

• We’re going to forget about narrative ENTIRELY (well, not entirely) and we’re going to write a list of objects like Thaddeus Gunn does in Kenyon Review Online.

• We’re going to madlib a story like Kim Magowan does in her flash over at Okaydonkey.

• We’re going to read EVERYTHING at Diagram because form is the name of the game there, and we’re definitely going to read everything there right now this instant.

• There is no such thing as crap writing.

• We just sometimes need bullet points.

• Bullet points are a liberation!

• They keep going.

• And going.

• Also, paragraphs are fine.

---

Jonathan Cardew is a contributing editor for Best Microfiction and blog editor/ workshop leader for Bending Genres. His flash fiction appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, wigleaf, Passages North, Atticus Review, Craft Literary, Superstition Review, and others. Originally from the UK, he lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

 

For more craft articles and workshops on hybrid writing, check out the Bending Genres website.

 

The ninth annual National Flash Fiction Day UK has finally arrived!

Check back here from 8:00 a.m. for Flash Feast and Flash Focus posts, but in the meantime....

• Put on your wellies: the 2020 Flood has started!  Join us at FlashFlood, NFFD's online journal for 24 hours of flash, with a new piece posting every 5 to 10 minutes.
• Or, if you fancy some writing, get out your favourite pen!  We're posting one flashy writing challenge every hour over at The Write-In.  If our prompts inspire some new writing, you can send it to us by midnight Sunday (BST) for a chance to be published at The Write-In over the extended NFFD weekend.  (See our submission guidelines for full details.)
• Pre-order the print edition or buy the ebook of our 2020 Anthology from our Bookshop in preparation for our online launch party this evening.
• Want to see what else is going on?  You can check out our 2020 Roadmap for full details.

Happy National Flash Fiction Day 2020!

National Flash Fiction Day kicks off in less than four hours!  Here's what we've got going on tomorrow, and where you can find it.

FlashFlood

For 24 hours straight starting at 00:01 BST, we’re publishing one flash every 5 to 10 minutes over at NFFD’s online journal, FlashFlood.

The Write-In

Over at NFFD’s The Write-In, we’re posting a flash prompt every hour on the hour from 00:00 – 24:00 BST on 6 June 2020. You have until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 7 June to submit your responses for a chance of publication.

2020 NFFD Anthology Launch

Join us from 7 – 10 pm BST for the 2020 NFFD virtual anthology launch. Readings from the anthology will be posted on our YouTube channel and we’ll be celebrating with chat and virtual toasts on Twitter and our dedicated Facebook event. All welcome!

Flash Feast

We had to cancel our NFFD 2020 live event, so we've brought our celebration online. In our Flash Feast series, we've invited flash superstars Michelle Elvy, Jonathan Cardew, and Nik Perring to share some videos, posts and ideas on the NFFD newsfeed over the course of the day, starting at 10:00 a.m. BST.

Also, the legendary Jude Higgins is running a NFFD workshop for NFFD from 3:00 - 6:30 p.m. for those who managed to snag a place. Contact her directly to enquire about last-minute places.

Flash Focus

Throughout the day, we’ll introduce you to a few independently-run flash fiction projects carried out by individuals and organisations across the UK. Keep an eye on our newsfeed to find out more about these brilliant projects, starting at 9:00 a.m. BST.

Beyond 6 June...

We’re coordinating with National Flash Fiction Day New Zealand to continue the celebration of flash through the month. Their full programme of events can be found on the NFFD NZ website.

National Flash Fiction Day 2020 is just around the corner, and we'll be celebrating as usual with a veritable flood of flash, starting from 00:01 BST and ending at midnight on Saturday, 6 June.

If you'd like to be a part of this year's Flood, do send us some work!  We are open for submissions through the week and are happy to read up to three 500-word stories per author on any theme, in any style.  Submissions are free.

Full submission guidelines can be found on the FlashFlood website and you can read about our wonderful team of editors here.

Don't have anything new?  No problem!  Previously published submissions are fine as long as you retain copyright and any period of exclusivity has lapsed.  We consider all previously unpublished work for award nominations such as Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and the Pushcart Prize.

We can't wait to read your work!

FlashFlood will be open for submissions from 00:01 BST Monday, 25 May to 23:59 BST Sunday, 31 May.

We are happy to read up to three 500-word stories per author on any theme, in any style.  Submissions are free.

Previously published submissions are fine as long as you retain copyright and any period of exclusivity has lapsed.  We consider all previously unpublished work for award nominations such as Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and the Pushcart Prize.

Full submission guidelines can be found on the FlashFlood website.

First of all, fear not; National Flash Fiction Day is not cancelled!

We are, however, moving our celebrations completely online and are working out the best ways we can serve the flash fiction community in this strange time. We will be posting more details in the coming weeks, but we’re excited about the possibility of bringing even more to the online flash fiction community worldwide for 2020.

We will still be printing the National Flash Fiction Day anthology, but we won’t go to print until it is safe for our printers to be at work. We can’t guarantee a timescale for the print edition at present, but our aim is to launch the digital version of the anthology on 6 June, regardless. We’re looking into various possibilities for a virtual launch party, so stay tuned!

Apologies for the delay in announcing the 2020 anthology line-up. We will post more details as soon as we can, but in the meantime, please bear with us.

Last but not least, we hope you and your loved ones are all staying safe and well.