Announcing our 2026 Microfiction Competition Judges

by

With our submission window set to open on the 1st of December, we’d like to take a moment to introduce you to this year’s judging panel.  This year, we’re excited to announce that Joanna Campbell, Debra A. Daniel, Emily Devane, and David Swann will be doing it all: reading all the submissions that come in, compiling a shortlist, and then deciding on the winning and highly commended flash.

Our submission window opens on Friday 1 December 2025 and closes on Thursday 15 February 2026.  We will be announcing results on or before 20 March 2026.  We’ll be reading flash of up to 100 words on any theme, but we are not able to consider simultaneous submissions this year.

For the 2026 competition, we will be awarding:

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

All winning and commended pieces will be published online as well as in the 2026 National Flash Fiction Day print anthology and will receive one free copy of the anthology.

You can find our full submission guidelines here.

In the new year, we’ll be posting interviews with our judges so you can get a better sense of what they’re looking for, but in the meantime, you can read more about each of them below.

Huge thanks to our judges for taking on the 2026 NFFD Microfiction Competition and we look forward to reading your work!

Joanna Campbell is a full-time writer from the Cotswolds. Her most recent novel is Instructions for the Working Day, which was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and for The Independent’s Book of the Month. Her short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, was shortlisted for the Rubery International Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill University Prize.
Her first published novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was runner-up in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award and published in How To Make A Window Snake. Her second novella-in-flash, Sybilla, won the inaugural National Flash Fiction Day Award.
Her flash fiction, Confirmation Class, came second in the 2017 Bridport Prize, for which her short stories have been shortlisted many times. She won the 2018 TSS Flash Fiction competition with Boy in a Bearskin. Two highly-commended micro fictions, India and Stiff, were published in the 2013 and 2015 NFFD anthologies, along with her flash fiction, Bright New Morning and Devil’s Mountain. More of her flash fiction has been published in several other NFFD anthologies and in Volume Three of Bath Flash Fiction.
Her short stories are published in numerous anthologies, have won first prize in the Exeter Writers competition, London Short Story Prize, Magic Oxygen Literary Prize, Retreat West Short Story Prize, and were shortlisted twice for the Bristol Prize. She has also won the Bath Short Story Award local prize in 2012 and 2025.
Joanna is also a competition reader and feedback editor for WestWord.
Debra A. Daniel is this year’s winner of the Bath Novella-in-Flash award and has previously published novellas-in-flash, A Family of Great Falls and The Roster, (AdHoc Fiction), novel, Woman Commits Suicide in Dishwasher and poetry chapbooks, The Downward Turn of August and As Is. She’s a Pushcart and Best Short Fictions nominee, has been longlisted and shortlisted in numerous competitions, and has won The Los Angeles Review short fiction prize. She was twice named SC Arts Commission Poetry Fellow, won the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, as well as awards from the Poetry Society of SC. Work has appeared in journals and anthologies including: With One Eye on the Cows, Things Left and Found by the Side of the Road, Los Angeles Review, Smokelong, Kakalak, Emrys, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River, Gargoyle. She’s sings in a band with her husband and was once on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Emily Devane is a writer, editor, teacher and bookseller living in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Ambit, Smokelong Quarterly, The Lonely Crowd and Best Microfictions. She has won a Word Factory Apprenticeship, a Northern Writers’ Award, and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. As well as teaching, you can find her at The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, where she runs a writing group, a regular spoken word night, and a busy programme of author events.
David Swann is a former journalist and university lecturer, who is now a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Cumbria, where he helps nurses and paramedics with their academic work. His novella, Season of Bright Sorrow (Ad Hoc, 2021), illustrated by Sam Hubbard, was named 2023 Rubery Book of the Year. Dave’s other five books include The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010), which was shortlisted in the Ted Hughes Prize for its evocation of a prison residency. In 2025, Dave worked as club poet at Blackburn Rovers Football Club, the team he’s supported since he was six!