Tuesday 29 May 2018

Introducing the National Flash Fiction Anthology 2018

We're absolutely thrilled to be able to share the title of this year's National Flash Fiction Day anthology, along with our full line-up!

This year's title is borrowed from a stunning and moving flash fiction by Alicia Bakewell. 

The cover will be revealed in the near future, and below you can read the full line-up of authors who'll feature in this year's anthology! We can't wait to share all of these stories with you!


Ripening: National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2018



Alison PowellHave Your Cake
Joanna CampbellGingerbread
Abi HynesHow to Eat a Grape
Helen RyeMe ‘N’ Claudz Of A Friday Night Down The Chippy And The Oasis Bar
Kymm CovenyPopcorn
Anna RymerEight Weeks Old
Tim StevensonNot for the Body
Sharon TelferCaramel Baby
Damhnait MonaghanHabits
Nan WigingtonFamous Last Meals
Leonora DesarThe Hot Fudge Lady
Deborah MeltvedtFarmer's Market
Sara ChansarkarMango Pulp
E. P. ChiewFor the Love of a Bagel
Emily DevaneThe Apple Seekers
Kevlin HenneyNo Carbonara
Olga WojtasScottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Emma HardingSay It with a Cake
Sarah EvansThe Word Eater
Sylvia PetterOysters
H Anthony HildebrandEwei
Megan GiddingsMilk and Eggs
FJ MorrisThe Root of It
A. E. WeisgerberKnoxville
Sophie van LlewynHi, Dad, How've You Been?
Philip CharterThe Change
Claire PoldersA Tasting of European Chefs
Jude HigginsThe Ways of the Flesh
Nancy StohlmanThe Pilgrimage 
Christopher M DrewA Turn of the Tide
Erica Plouffe LazureThe Italic
Alicia BakewellRipening
Judy DarleyCornish Gold
Laura PearsonNot Love, Not Carbohydrates
Gay DeganiTroy Mills
Calum KerrCooking on Gas
Anne SummerfieldOnly Now Can I Think of All The Things I Should Have Said
Sal PageA Fifteen Stone Woman, with a Six Stone Daughter Who Will Not Eat, Writes Shopping Lists
Rachael DunlopBorder Line
J. E. KennedyAn Offering
Angela ReadmanAttack of the Robot Grannies
TM UpchurchPlum Skin
Nuala O'ConnorSponge
Diane SimmonsA Picnic in the Park
Stephanie HuttonNourishment
Robert ScotellaroThe Polygamist's Three Wives
Ros WoolnerMake a Wish
Gemma GovierBass Drums and Trumpets for Tea
Ingrid JendrzejewskiOn the Wabash
Frankie McMillanThe Happy Eggs from Podomosky
Meg PokrassCulinary
Nadia StoneYaya's Pips
David CookThe Shock Of The New Breakfasts
Jacqueline SavilleIt's Not Her
Jan KaneenSour
Santino PrinziNonni
Charlotte WührerShipwreck Feast
KM ElkesLate Blackberries
Poppy O'NeillThe Creator is Disturbed at Her Vanity by the Cries of Mankind
Christopher AllenSamuel is Mango
Ioanna MavrouWeekends in Waianae
Jennifer HarveyThirteen
Tara LaskowskiGoodnight Mush

Micro Competition Winners
Fiona J. MackintoshThe Birth of the Baptist
Charmaine WilkersonPull
Rachael DunlopA Nice Bit of Linoleum
Lisa FerrantiFifth Grade
Amanda O'CallaghanDeath of a Friend
Catherine EdmundsForgetting, Remembering
Rebecca FieldThings I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Alan Beard1990
Elaine DillonLouise
Anita GoveasWhite Lies

Thursday 10 May 2018

Micro Fiction Competition Winners!

Before we announce the winners of the micro fiction competition, I want to apologise about a technical issue that meant all of my lovely emails I sent out to authors who entered our micro competition or submitted to the anthology did not send. 

As usual, there were hundreds and hundreds of submitters. We always send out an email to let people know whether or not they've been accepted via a link to this blog where the announcement is made. Only one set of emails actually sent; the rest were bounced back as a failed delivery. Obviously my mail box was working to Bank Holiday rules.

Apologies again if you haven't received an email, but you can find out if you're in the anthology or were shortlisted for the micro competition by checking out our previous blog post.


Without further delay, it's time to announce the results of this year's micro fiction competition!

Again, I want to thank our judges for doing such a stellar job of reading through all 600 entries, narrowing it down to just 24, and then again to only 10. Thank you to Kevlin Henney, Ingrid Jendrzrjewski, Angela Readman, Rob Walton, Brianna Snow, and Anne Patterson. 

I also want to thank everyone who submitted, and to congratulate again all of the authors who made the shortlist -- that, in itself, is a huge achievement. The quality was very high, and this made for a very tight race to the finish.




First Place:
The Birth of the Baptist by Fiona J. Mackintosh

Second Place:
Pull by Charmaine Wilkerson

Third Place:
A Nice Bit of Linoleum by Rachael Dunlop

Highly Commended Stories:

Fifth Grade by Lisa Ferranti
Death of a Friend by Amanda O’Callaghan
Forgetting, Remembering by Catherine Edmunds
Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message by Rebecca Field
1990 by Alan Beard
Louise by Elaine Dillon
White Lies by Anita Goveas

Congratulations to all of the authors of our winning and highly commended micros! 

All of the stories are published below, will appear on our website in due course, and will be published in this year's National Flash Fiction Day anthology! We hope you love these micros as much as we do!


First Place:
The Birth of the Baptist
Fiona J. Mackintosh

Slide the 100 lire coin into the slot. Watch the lights flare, the fresco spring to life, Ghirlandaio’s pinks, blues, and greens. Watch your girl in denim shorts stare upward, lips parted, eyes roaming over the ancient stone wall. See her smile at St. Elizabeth reclining, at the wet nurse suckling the infant John the Baptist. And when the coin runs out and the chapel snaps back into darkness, know that you too are just the forerunner, that one day she’ll leave you in your own private wilderness with the taste of locusts and wild honey bitter in your mouth.



Second Place:
Pull
Charmaine Wilkerson

When their fathers went to the cockfights in the next parish over, the girls begged rides from the neighbour boys. While their dads wiped flecks of blood from their faces, the girls left their shoes and dresses on the sand. While the boys watched, rapt and rigid, from the powdery shore, the girls plunged, head first, into the warm saltwater, pulling through the waves, pulling through their fear of sharks, pulling through the sting of rays, pulling against lactic acid and breathing in gulps of their future as champions, their ticket away from this island.



Third Place:
A Nice Bit of Linoleum
Rachael Dunlop

The smell of lavender floor wax accompanies her out of the house. She’d rather have linoleum in the hall but parquet has more cachet, he says. She sniffs at her cardigan cuffs. She could have tucked them better into her housecoat this morning. At the greengrocer’s she runs a nail along the silky gills of a mushroom and inhales, longing for a life lived in the leaf-mould litter of a forest floor, peaty earth under her stockinged feet. Failing that, she thinks as she drops the mushroom into a torn-cornered paper bag, she’d settle for a nice bit of linoleum. 



Highly Commended Stories:


Fifth Grade 
Lisa Ferranti

Fifth grade was the year we giggled through the school nurse’s explanation of menstruation. The year boys were not separated from girls, and Jimmy M. fainted, fell at my feet. The year we ogled bare-breasted fertility statues at the art museum. Told we were forbidden to touch. I waited for the teacher to round the corner, pointed my finger a baby’s breath from the carved stone. I swung my hair, tried to catch Jimmy’s eye. Fifth grade was the year I learned to say without saying: Dare me?The year a blue-blazered security guard grabbed my arm.  



Death of a Friend
Amanda O’Callaghan

When she met her gaze, that last time, she remembered the mouse. Once, standing on the back verandah, night sunk deep into the trees, she’d heard the sound of bird’s wings, wheeling close. She knew it was the owl; she’d seen it, days before, perched on the sheeny muscle of ghost gum, turning its domed head. But this time, she could see nothing. There was only the lethal fold of feathers, swooping down, close to the grass. Then, a tiny creature carried aloft, shrieking from its miniature lungs, the shape of its outrage borne away, beyond a pitiless moon. 



Forgetting, Remembering
Catherine Edmunds


The gulf between us is a river in spate. We nudge each other when the snoring becomes intolerable, but our arms remain empty. 

You go up for an afternoon nap, and don’t come down again. The paramedics ask me my name. I don’t know any more.  

Later, I iron all your shirts, your socks, ties, hats, documents; I iron the bedsheets and spray them with starch until the river has subsided. I lie on the hot, alien sheets and scorch my back and buttocks until I remember my name.



Things I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Rebecca Field

My toothbrush. My spare contact lenses. That Bob Dylan album I lent you. The old Iron Maiden T-shirt you gave me to sleep in at your place. My Fight Club video. Your housemates, except for that one time I saw Dave in Fulton’s Frozen Foods and he blanked me. Your house cat – I wonder who fed him once I wasn’t there anymore. You in the morning with the shakes, thinking about your next drink. All the money I lent you to go out drinking without me. Best of all, that look my mother would give me when I mentioned you.



1990
Alan Beard

Girl in a Blockbusters smelling of Shake ‘n’ Vac, stares blankly in her soft plumpness and soft permed hair at the pop video playing. Vanilla Ice. She thinks of customers’ lives, their homes as they return last night’s film: Ghost, Petty Woman. Evenings ahead with her husband watching videos, maybe this boy who hangs around, chats to her between customers. Does she even like him? He has big brown eyes. He says put on heavy metal. Ugh, she says, not likely. She’s old fashioned, likes the Carpenters; the woman starved herself to death, but sang beautifully before she did.



Louise
Elaine Dillon


The thunder that meant the end of summer sent us running inside, just as the rain started hissing on the path. Fat drops topped up the paddling pool.

We sat in the doorframe and dared Louise to do something we wouldn’t, for fear of a leathering.  

She pulled off her swimsuit and exploded over the threshold. The grass licked her heels and her fine hair soaked dark against her back, as she sprinted towards the leylandii and launched herself through, like she was diving into a deep pool.

We sat with our mouths open and a towel across our laps.



White Lies
Anita Goveas

It's a tradition for Block B, Mary Gee Hall to eat together every Sunday. The first week of the Easter holidays, there's only three students eating lentil spag bol.
Shaven-headed Angus and curvy-hipped Lei are touching feet under the table, and mumbling about their individual plans for the week to their kitchen-mate. Peony-faced Kate cries at wildlife documentaries and once filled Lei's bed with rose petals for Valentine's day.
Leicester University is teaching them essay-writing, what happens when you put a black sock in with your whites, and that what you don’t say is more important than what you do.




Sunday 6 May 2018

Micro Fiction Competition and Food Anthology Announcements!

Good afternoon, flashers! 

We are now in our seventh year of National Flash Fiction Day! As always, both our micro fiction competition and annual anthology encourage hundreds of you to send us your best flashes, and this year was no different. Both competitions were incredibly fierce this year, but I can finally share with you all some news!


Micro Fiction Competition Shortlist

This year we had around 600 entries for our micro fiction competition, where we asked you to write a story of 100 words or fewer on any theme. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our brilliant judges who had the rewarding but difficult task of whittling these 600 entries to a shortlist of just 24 stories: Angela Readman, Anne Patterson, Briana Snow, Ingrid Jendrzrjewski, Kevlin Henny, and Rob Walton. 

We'd also like to thank you all for submitting! 

Without further delay, here's this year's shortlisted authors and titles:

Alan Beard1990
Rachael DunlopA Nice Bit of Linoleum
Wes LeeConch
Amanda O'CallaghanDeath of a Friend
Lisa FerrantiFifth Grade
Carmen MarcusFirst Date
Catherine EdmundsForgetting, Remembering
Alison WoodhouseHome Fires
Victoria RichardsI remember her in espadrilles
Gaynor JonesLadybird, Ladybird
Elaine DillonLouise
Jan KaneenMy Teenage Son Defining Words Just Before I challenge his use of Possessive Pronouns
Jeanette DaviesPrimigravida at the Day Centre
Charmaine WilkersonPull
David CookRevenge, Via Handicrafts
Lucy GoldringSchool Run
Noa SivanSign Language
Clare O'BrienSuspension
Graham W. HendersonTen Minute IQ Test
Fiona J. MackintoshThe Birth of the Baptist
Shirl WeirThe Haves and the Have Nots
Jan KaneenThe Last Six Things I’ll Have Done by the Time You Wake up
Rebecca FieldThings I Never Saw Again After You Dumped Me By Text Message
Anita GroveasWhite Lies

Congratulations to all of our shortlisted authors! The judges have already chosen the winning stories, and a further announcement will be made once all of the scores have been collated. The winning and highly commended flashes will be published on our website and in this year's flash fiction anthology.

NFFD Food-themed Flash Fiction Anthology

Again, this year our anthology editors have had hundreds of incredible flashes to read and choose from, making selecting 50 stories for the anthology extremely enjoyable, but equally tricky. 

Myself and this year's co-editor, Alison Powell, challenged you all to write flashes of 500 words or fewer responding to the theme of Food, and were so spoilt for choice! There were numerous delicacies for us to sink our teeth into, and so many different responses to the theme. We feel that this anthology is going to be something really special.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Alison for all of her hard work in helping me choose our top 50 stories. 

And so, here are our anthology authors and their flashes:

Philip CharterThe Change
KM ElkesLate Blackberries
Nan WigingtonFamous Last Meals
Nuala O'ConnorSponge
J. E. KennedyAn Offering
Frankie McMillanThe Happy Eggs from Podomosky
Ingrid JendrzrjewskiOn the Wabash
Jude HigginsThe Ways of the Flesh
Alicia BakewellRipening
Joanna CampbellGingerbread
Nadia StoneYaya's Pips
Charlotte WührerShipwreck Feast
Diane SimmonsA Picnic in the Park
Sylvia PetterOysters
Judy DarleyCornish Gold
Sal PageA Fifteen Stone Woman, with a Six Stone Daughter Who Will Not Eat, Writes Shopping Lists
Christopher M DrewA Turn of the Tide
Sarah EvansThe Word Eater
E. P. ChiewFor the Love of a Bagel
Rachael DunlopBorder Line
Emily DevaneThe Apple Seekers
Anna RymerEight Weeks Old
Helen RyeMe ‘N’ Claudz Of A Friday Night Down The Chippy And The Oasis Bar
Emma HardingSay It with a Cake
Anne SummerfieldOnly Now Can I Think of All The Things I Should Have Said
Olga WojtasScottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Sophie van LlewynHi, Dad, How've You Been?
Sharon TelferCaramel Baby
Ioanna MavrouWeekends in Waianae
Gay DeganiTroy Mills
Jan KaneenSour
Sara ChansarkarMango Pulp
Claire PoldersA Tasting of European Chefs
Ros WoolnerMake a Wish
Stephanie HuttonNourishment
Jacqueline SavilleIt's Not Her
FJ MorrisThe Root of It
Damhnait MonaghanHabits
A. E. WeisgerberKnoxville
Poppy O'NeillThe Creator is Disturbed at Her Vanity
Jennifer HarveyThirteen
H Anthony HildebrandEwei
David CookThe Shock Of The New Breakfasts
Kymm CovenyPopcorn
Deborah MeltvedtFarmer's Market
Erica Plouffe LazureThe Italic
Laura PearsonNot Love, Not Carbohydrates
Gemma GovierBass Drums and Trumpets for Tea
TM UpchurchPlum Skin
Abi HynesHow to Eat a Grape

Congratulations to all of our authors! The full line-up with stories from guest authors will be announced at a later date, as well as the title and cover reveal!

Thank you all, as always, for supporting National Flash Fiction Day! We can't wait to announce the winners of the micro competition and to serve up our food-themed flash anthology!


Meanwhile, if you're planning an event for National Flash Fiction Day on or around Saturday 16th June, please don't hesitate to email us at nationalflashfictionday@gmail.co.uk with all of the details, and we'll help shout out about it!