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Competition Submission Guidelines

National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition Submission Guidelines

Submissions for our 2024 Microfiction Competition are now closed.
Our next competition will be open from 1 December 2024 to 15 February 2025.

Although we are not open for submissions at present, here are the details for our next competition.

We are looking for work of up to 100 words on any theme and will be awarding:

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

The winning and highly commended authors will be published in the National Flash Fiction Day 2025 anthology. Winning and shortlisted authors will also receive a free print copy of this anthology.

Please note that we cannot accept simultaneous submissions this year.  Please only submit work that is not and will not be under consideration elsewhere before 15 March 2025.  By submitting work to the NFFD Microfiction Competition, you are agreeing to publication online and in the 2025 NFFD Anthology if your work is selected as a prizewinner or highly commended flash.

The 2025 judges will be announced later this year.

Microfiction Competition Submission Guidelines

Note: these are the submission guidelines for the Microfiction Competition.  The NFFD Anthology is a separate project with a separate team.  You can find the guidelines for the anthology here.

  1. Please submit up to three (3) unpublished flashes of 100 words or fewer before our deadline. Titles are not included in the word count, and there is no minimum word count.
  2. Please submit all your work in ONE email, inserting up to three micro fictions in ONE document. This helps the organisers tremendously. Of course, if you submit and then decide to send more work later in the submission window, mulitple submissions are fine.
  3. Please send your work to nffdmicrocomp@gmail.com. Accepted document formats are .doc, .docx, .odt and .rtf .  (If your piece relies heavily on specific formatting that is not supported by these formats, feel free to include a .pdf in addition.)
  4. Entries will be read and judged anonymously. To avoid disqualification, please do not put your name, address, email, telephone number or any personally identifying information on your document.
  5. In your email, please tell us how you would like your name/pen name to appear alongside your story and in announcements online.
  6. All styles and themes are welcome.  There is no theme for the Microfiction Competition.
  7. Submissions open on 1 December 2024 00:01 GMT and close on 15 February 2025, 23:59pm GMT.  We will announce the results on or before 15 March 2025.
  8. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.  Please do not send us work that is or will be under consideration elsewhere before 15 March 2025.
  9. We only accept unpublished work. We do not class stories posted on private blogs, social media pages, or online groups (such as in workshopping forums, online courses etc.), as previously published.
  10. Submissions are open internationally. Although we anonymise submissions, we actively encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented groups, such as BAME, LGBTQ+, and disabled writers.
  11. We cannot accept submissions with copyrighted song lyrics.  If you use song lyrics in your flash, the song must be in the public domain.
  12. Please do not send us AI-generated work; at present, we are only considering original work written by humans.

The submission fees for this year’s competition are:

  • £2.00 for one (1) entry.
  • £3.75 for two (2) entries.
  • £5.25 for three (3) entries.

To pay, click the 'Buy Now' button, fill in the amount you wish to pay, and then complete the transaction by choosing to pay via PayPal or credit card.

Number of Entries



Money raised through entry fees will go to the cost of prize money, printing the NFFD anthology, postage, and running future National Flash Fiction Day events (free to the public).

To submit your work, attach your stories to an email with your name and flash title(s). Please also include the PayPal Transaction Reference Number for your entry fee and your email address if it differs from the email address you are using to submit your entries.

Free Entry Scheme

Thanks to the generosity of donors, we are able to offer a number of free entries to disadvantaged and marginalised writers. If you would like to take advantage of this, please note that you would like your submission considered as part of the ‘free entry scheme’. This will not affect how your story is received in any way; judges will not be aware of the free entry status of submissions. You do not need to prove, justify, or explain your eligibility. If you find the submission fee a barrier to entry, then you are eligible.

If you have questions about your eligibility for the scheme or how to donate to support disadvantaged and marginalised writers, do feel free to get in touch at nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com using the subject line MICROFICTION FREE ENTRY.

Rights

National Flash Fiction Day requires non-exclusive first publication rights and incidental promotional rights. National Flash Fiction Day retains the unrestricted right to publish selected stories in its anthologies, in print and online, and in any relevant promotional material, and will retain copyright and economic rights for the anthology as a whole.

All rights for individual stories revert back to their respective author upon publication.

The author is free to republish their work, either in part, as a whole, or in an altered form, wherever they like after National Flash Fiction Day have published the anthology.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us via email with “RIGHTS” in the subject line: nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com

Please note that submission of work by an author to the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology shall be considered acceptance of the full guidelines above.

Data Collection

We collect your name and email for the purpose of informing you about the status of your submission. If your story is accepted, we collect your name, email and address for the purpose of sending you your contributor’s copy of the anthology, and for nominating work to writing awards (such as Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize). For some award nominations, we are required to pass your email address along to the publisher. If you would prefer us not to do this, please mention this when you submit your work so that we don’t consider your piece for an award that requires us to pass along your details.

Additional Support

We would like to keep submission fees as low as possible whilst also raising enough to continue our publishing and programming.  If you would like to support us, please consider buying a book from our back catalogue or donating a small amount via our PayPal link to help keep this project going.  We will list donors of £10 or more as benefactors in the 2025 NFFD Anthology, if they wish to be named.



If you would like to help in other ways, please email us at nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com .

Thank you for your support.