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Entries for the 2019 National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition are now open! This year’s judges are Angela Readman, Diane Simmons, Kevlin Henney, and Judy Darley.

Send our judges your very best micro fictions of 100 words or fewer!

Entries are open from Friday 4th January 2019 until Friday 15th March 2019, 23:59pm GMT.

Please read our submission guidelines carefully before submitting.


Angela Readman is the winner of the first National Flash Fiction Day competition. Her short stories have since been winners of The Costa Short Story Award, The Mslexia Story Prize and The Anton Chekhov Award for Short Fiction. Her story collection Don't Try This at Home was short listed in The Edge Hill and won The Rubery Book Award. In January 2019 her debut novel Something like Breathing was published by And Other Stories. She also writes poetry and is published by Nine Arches.

Diane SimmonsDiane Simmons is a writer, editor, a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day, and part of the organising team for Flash Fiction Festivals UK. She has been an editor for FlashFlood, a flash fiction judge and for three years was a reader for the Bath Short Story Competition. Her fiction has featured in a variety of anthologies and publications including Mslexia; New Flash Fiction Review; To Carry Her Home, BFFA Vol One; The Lobsters Run Free, BFFA Vol 2; Flash Fiction Festival, Vols One and Two; Flash I Love You (Paper Swans); FlashBack Fiction; Micro Madness; and six National flash Fiction Day UK anthologies. In 2009 she won second place in ITV's This Morning National Short Story Competition and since then has been placed in many flash fiction and short story contests, including the HISSAC flash prize; the NFFD micro competition; Writers' Forum Short Story Competition; Worcester Literature Festival Flash Competition; 99 Fiction; NAWG; and The Frome International Short Story Competition. Her stories have also been shortlisted for numerous competitions, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award; Exeter Flash; and Flash 500. Her debut collection of flash, ‘Finding a Way’ is being published by Ad Hoc Fiction in February 2019. She tweets @scooterwriter. You can learn more about Diane at You can learn more about Diane at https://www.dianesimmons.co.uk/.

Kevlin Henney writes shorts and flashes and drabbles of fiction and books and articles on software development. His fiction has appeared online and on tree (Daily Science FictionLitroNew ScientistPhysics WorldSpelkReflex FictionLabLitFlight Journal and many more) and has been included in a number of anthologies (The Dark Half of the Year,North by SouthwestWe Can Improve YouHauntedSalt Anthology of New WritingRipeningSleep Is a Beautiful Colour and many more). As well as having his work rejected and make no impression whatsoever on writing competitions, Kevlin’s stories have been longlisted, shortlisted and placed, and he won the CrimeFest 2014 Flashbang contest. He reads at spoken word events, winning the National Flash-Fiction Day Oxford flash slam in 2012, and has performed his work on local radio (BBC Radio Bristol and Ujima). Kevlin has been involved in the organisation of the Bristol Festival of Literature and events for National Flash-Fiction Day. He lives in Bristol and online, where he can stalked as @KevlinHenney on Twitter, @kevlinhenney on Medium and @kevlin.henney on Instagram.

Judy Darley is a British fiction writer, poet and journalist who can't stop writing about the fallibilities and strengths of the human mind. Her flash fiction and stories have been published by magazines and anthologies in the UK, New Zealand, US and Canada, including Seren Books, MslexiaUnthology 8 and SmokeLong Quarterly, as well as in her debut collection Remember Me To The Bees. Sky Light Rain, her second collection, will be published by Valley Press in autumn 2019. She has shared her stories on BBC radio, as well as in cafés, caves, an artist’s studio and a disused church. Find Judy at http://www.SkyLightRain.com, and https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.

Submissions for the 2019 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology are now open, and this year will be more exciting than ever!

Our theme is filled with possibility…or not! Our theme can reveal secrets to us and it can keep danger hidden. Is our theme trying to keep everyone from getting in, or is our theme trying to keep you from getting out? Knock, knock, who’s there? It’s our theme: Doors!

We want you to open the door to stories wild with imagination. We’re looking for those creepy mysteries about doors we can’t find the key to. We want those funny tales of frustration when doors do exactly what they’re supposed to when we don’t want them to. Maybe the stories you want to share are about metaphorical doors, filled with the disappointment of doors that are closed to us or brimming with excitement at new opportunities. Whichever door you decide to write about, make sure it’s your best and that is fewer than 500 words!

The co-editors standing in the doorway of this year’s anthology are Joanna Campbell and Santino Prinzi. Submissions are open from Friday 4th January 2019 until Friday 15th March 2019, 23:59pm GMT.

Please read our submission guidelines carefully before submitting.


Santino PrinziSantino Prinzi is a Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day in the UK, a Consulting Editor for New Flash Fiction Review, and is one of the founding organisers of the annual Flash Fiction Festival. His flash fiction pamphlet, There’s Something Macrocosmic About All of This (2018), is available from V-Press, and his short flash collection, Dots and other flashes of perception (2016), is available from The Nottingham Review Press. He is also a reviewer of flash fiction collections and novellas-in-flash for various outlets. As well as a nominee for the Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize, his writing has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Jellyfish Review, And Other Poems, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Airgonaut, Litro Online, Stories for Homes Anthology Vol.2 and many more. To find out more follow him on Twitter (@tinoprinzi) or visit his website: santinoprinzi.com

Joanna Campbell is a writer from the Cotswolds. Her short fiction has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. For example, her short story, Upshots, won the 2015 London Short Story Prize. In 2017, Bath Flash Fiction Award published her novella-in-flash, A Safer Way To Fall. Her short story, Much, came second in the 2017 Exeter Story Prize. In 2018, Brad’s Rooster Food, shortlisted in the Royal Academy Pin Drop Award, was chosen for the Simon and Schuster anthology, A Short Affair. Her flash fiction has been widely published, including five times in NFFD anthologies. In 2017, Confirmation Class came second in the Bridport Prize, for which her short stories have been shortlisted eight times. In 2016, her solo collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, was published in hardback by Ink Tears and shortlisted for the 2016 Rubery Book Award and longlisted for the 2017 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. In 2015, Brick Lane published her first novel, Tying Down The Lion, which was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Joanna is working on two new novels, one of which, The Days Between The Hours, was judged second in the 2018 Stroud Book Festival competition. You can find her online at Joanna-Campbell.com.