Skip to content

Category: News

Published on Leave a comment on Your Roadmap to National Flash Fiction Day 2022

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 Check in at half past the hour every hour from 7:30 am to midnight for our Debut Flash Series — new flashes written by unpublished writers.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!

 

 

 

 

Published on Leave a comment on Novella-in-Flash Award Winner – Publication Day for Sybilla!

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.

 

Published on Leave a comment on NFFD Novella-in-Flash Award Winner: Publication Date and Cover Reveal!

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.

Published on Leave a comment on 2022 NFFD Anthology Title and Cover Reveal!

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!

 

Published on Leave a comment on National Flash Fiction Day 2022: Register for our free flash fiction workshop

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/

Published on Leave a comment on FlashFlood is open for submissions from 1 – 7 May 2022

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....

 

Published on Leave a comment on National Flash Fiction Day 2022 Anthology Line Up!

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

Published on Leave a comment on National Flash Fiction Day 2022 Microfiction Competition Shortlist

This year, we were thrilled to receive 421 entries to the National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition.

Our judges, Christopher Allen, Joanna Campbell, Tracy Fells and Damhnait Monaghan had the difficult job of whittling down the stories to a shortlist of 27. 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 micro below, please feel free to shout about it, but as judging is still taking place, do not reveal your title at this stage.

Now, without further delay, our 27 shortlisted stories are:

  • A Pocketful of Cookies
  • birds of paradise (see also: dumb, stupid birds)
  • depression(s)
  • Everyone knows Darcie’s going to die on her knees waiting for him to say it
  • Everything That We Once Were
  • Fails to Understand Requirements
  • fat caterpillars
  • First Time Lucky
  • Friday Afternoon
  • Grandma’s Book of Snakes, Chapter 1
  • Here the stream floods
  • How to Prepare Supper for an Absent Lover
  • Jam is Thicker Than Water
  • Just a Word to the Snowblind
  • Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw, 1993
  • Obviously I’ll help him tie his laces
  • Red Light Green Light
  • Richter Scale 8
  • Siren’s Song ("They wanted it, you know…")
  • The Accountant Goes to the Awards Night
  • The Bridge
  • Things We Learned About Sarajevo During the Siege
  • We Need to Grow Fins
  • What She Would Rather Tell a Stranger
  • When Grief Auditions
  • When the robins contemplate their empty nest
  • Why my mother-in-law sits in the corner sucking leftover chicken bones

Thank you again to everyone who submitted, and good luck to everyone who made the shortlist!

Published on Leave a comment on Last chance for the 2022 NFFD Anthology & Microfiction Competition

This is a reminder that the submission window for the 2022 National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition and for the eleventh annual National Flash Fiction Day Anthology closes tomorrow, 15 February 2022, at 23:59 GMT.

These are two separate projects run by two separate teams with two separate submissions processes.  Here's a reminder of what each is all about....

NFFD Anthology

The theme of this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology is FREEDOM.

What do you think of when you think of freedom? Freedom from, freedom to do, freedom to be?

Does your mind go to prisons and zoos or to protest marches and politics or to leaving the office on a Friday, packing a bag and heading off on holiday? Or is it simply freedom of thought? Or is it George Michael belting out that classic? But maybe you have a very different view of freedom; go on, surprise us!

Feel free to interpret FREEDOM however you wish, in 500 words or fewer.  You do not need to include the word 'freedom' in your piece.

This year, we are thrilled to announce that we will be awarding two Editor's Choice Awards.  The 2022 editors, Karen Jones and Chris Drew will each select one piece from the accepted stories to receive a £50 prize.  Find out more about our editors here and keep an eye on our news feed for their interviews early next year.

You can read our full anthology submission guidelines here or go straight to our submission manager, Duosuma, where you can submit your work.

NFFD Microfiction Competition

We're reading flash of up to 100 words on any theme.

This year, we're offering:

  • £150 for first place
  • £100 for second place
  • £50 for third place
  • seven awards of £20 for highly commended pieces.

All winning and highly commended flash will be published both online and in the NFFD print anthology.

Our judges are that Christopher Allen, Joanna Campbell, Tracy Fells, and Damhnait Monaghan.  We'll be posting interviews with our judges in the new year, but in the meantime, you can read more about our panel here.

We are not able to consider simultaneous submissions this year, so please don't send us work that will be under consideration elsewhere before we announce the  results on or before 15 March 2022.  Our full competition guidelines and details of how to submit by email can be found here.

 

There's still time to send us something if you haven't already!  Our Anthology and Microfiction teams look forward to reading your work....

 

Published on Leave a comment on Write freely enough to capture the essence of your story: an Interview with Joanna Campbell

Welcome to the sixth and last 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 from 1 December 2021 to 15 February 2022.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Joanna Campbell, one of this year's judges for the 2022 NFFD Microfiction Competition, about favourite flash, breakfast cereal, and her upcoming novel, as well as her tips for writing a great microfiction....

 

Joanna Campbell

Diane: If you could be the writer of any flash fiction ever written, which one would you choose?

Joanna: Probably Sticks by George Saunders. I like the brackets he placed around the story, beginning on Thanksgiving Day and ending with garbage day. Most of all, I love its perfect rhythm.

Diane: You are the author of the short story collection When Planets Slip Their Tracks (Ink Tears) and a novel Tying Down the Lion (Brick Lane Publishing). Your second novel is due to be published in 2022 – could you tell us a little about it?

Joanna: It is called Instructions for the Working Day and will be published by Fairlight Books. It is about a troubled young man called Neil Fischer who becomes the owner of an East German village, which has been abandoned and left to rot throughout the years since reunification, then sold at auction. Neil plans to bring it back to life, but encounters an unsettling reception from the villagers. The renovation project is fraught with setbacks and surreal encounters. These invoke dark memories of his troubled upbringing and the guilt haunting him since the death of a school friend. While Neil struggles with his past, he fails to notice the unsettling atmosphere and escalating danger. In the meantime, Silke, one of the villagers, is aiming to return to her studies in Berlin, interrupted over thirty years ago during the Cold War when she attempted to escape.

Diane: Can you remember the first time you heard the term ‘flash fiction’ or the first flash fiction you remember reading and admiring?

Joanna: Although it wasn’t termed flash fiction at the time, the first I admired was Chapter V from Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time. It is a tiny chapter or a vignette; very short, spare and complete. I still know it by heart and it never fails to move me.

Diane: You have always been a big supporter of National Flash Fiction Day and have flash fictions in six of our anthologies, two of which were Highly Commended micro fictions. Do you have any advice on how to write a successful micro?

Joanna: I think it’s best to write your micro without being distracted by the word count. Then you can make sure you write freely enough to capture the essence of your story. Afterwards you can edit ferociously until you are left with its raw, beating heart.

Diane: Do you read when you’re eating? If not, would you if you could get away with it?

Joanna: Definitely! Eating and reading are a good combination. Usually I settle for a bowl of bone-dry, crunchy cereal, because I’m quite spartan and it lasts a long time.

 

Joanna Campbell is a full-time writer from the Cotswolds. Her short stories have won first place in the 2011 Exeter Writers competition, the 2013 Bath Short Story Award Local Prize, the 2015 London Short Story Prize, the 2018 Magic Oxygen Literary Prize and the 2018 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 published in 2016 (Ink Tears). It was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill University Story Prize. Her novel, Tying Down The Lion, was published in 2015 (Brick Lane Publishing). Her next novel, Instructions for the Working Day, will be published in 2022 (Fairlight Books). She is on Twitter at @joannacampbell_.