Welcome to the first of 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 until 15 February 2026 and this interview series will resume in the new year.
This week, Diane Simmons chats with Sharon Telfer, this year’s NFFD Anthology Guest Editor, about names, settings, the writing process, and this year’s anthology theme….
DS: Thank you so much for agreeing to be the guest editor for this year’s anthology. The theme is BRIDGES. Do you have a view on how you would perhaps like people to approach the theme? Or anything that you would like them to avoid?
ST: I love this theme. Bridges span (sorry!) so much. They connect us, but sometimes divide us. They can be built, raised, held, burnt or swept away. Ancient, modern, natural, they might be made of log or rope or stone or steel or ice. The drop may be inches or a terrifying plunge. We might walk, ride, drive or sail across, for a few steps or a few miles – when we come to them. Or perhaps they are intangible, taking us from sleep to waking, from one feeling to the next. You’ll find one on a boat or on a starship, running through a piece of music, at the card table, in your nose, in your mouth. Maybe you need to go under not over; maybe you can only stand and wave from one side to the other. They are the place to exchange spies or pledge undying love. But watch out, there could be a troll lurking underneath.
Every year, I’m amazed by how each writer in the NFFD anthology has such a unique take on the latest theme. I’m really looking forward to exploring the submissions pile to find whatever’s there. Personally, I do love flash that is ambitious in how it treats time. I’m a cheerleader for historical flash. I’m interested in how structure can strengthen meaning and resonance. I believe flash, compressed as it is, can focus light onto the biggest issues we face. And in these challenging times, it feels like we all need the hope of seeing some bridges built. But we never know which story will strike us most until we sit and read it. Don’t be afraid to take some risks, write from your heart and dig into your story to give it sufficient layers to stand up to the rereading that is part of any competitive selection process.
DS: When you’re writing, how do you select the names of your characters? Do you have a particular name that you keep going back to either consciously or unconsciously?
ST: That’s such an interesting question, Diane. A name can summon up age, culture, religion, class, gender, when and where a character is living. That makes them hardworking shorthand in very short fiction. But it can also lay them open to lazy stereotypes and constrict resonance. I often choose not to name characters, especially in the shortest pieces, so each reader can project their own perspectives into the heart of the story.
Where naming does feel it has something to add, it depends on each story. I don’t have any go-tos. In one recent flash, Celia Needs to Go Deeper, for example, I chose the name Celia – or it suggested itself – because I liked the rhythm in the assonance (the repeating ‘ee’s) and the echoes of ‘sea’ which is the foundational motif in that story. If I’m writing historical flash, I’ll always check that name was in use at that time; it’s very easy to look this up online.
DS: Everyone approaches writing in a slightly different way. Some writers work best from visual prompts, others find that they can only write in a noisy café or workshop, while some people need complete silence. Can you tell us a little about your writing process?
ST: Personally, I’m most likely to get my ideas when I’m doing something physically mundane (going for a walk, on the bus, hanging out the washing, in the shower) rather than from formal prompts or dedicated freewriting. They’ll be sparked by something I’ve heard or read about, perhaps somewhere we’ve been, and that has snagged for some reason. I usually carry a story idea around in the back of my head where it ‘ferments’ for some days or weeks and I’ll be ‘head-writing’. At some point, I’ll get a clear shape for the first sentence; sometimes it’s the last sentence or the title. Once I’ve got that, I feel ready to start putting things down. (Having once been told this was a very odd approach, I was reassured to learn recently that the novelist Sarah Perry does something similar.) That sentence sets the theme and tone and will usually survive into the final draft in more or less that ‘head-written’ form, even though I do a lot of close editing as a rule (my favourite part!). I very rarely cut it, though it might become the title (that happened with Celia Needs to Go Deeper). I find ‘middles’ hardest to write. I usually have a strong sense of where I’m starting and where I want to finish but getting everything convincingly from here to there can be tricky.
Because I need that fermenting time, I rarely write anything in ‘live’ workshop prompts that I feel like taking forward. (Asynchronous workshops, where there’s time to step away, are different.) I do still get lots from workshops, like interesting techniques, that go into the general fermenting pot. Some people rattle off brilliant complete pieces. I found that intimidating for a while, but there’s no one right way: it’s a case of trying out approaches and finding what works for you.
DS: Your flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published by Reflex Press and was long listed for the 2022 Edgehill Prize. Can you tell us a little about how you went about putting together this collection?
ST: It really was a collection, in that I gathered the stories I already had and selected from there. I didn’t write anything new specifically, though some stories were unpublished. I chose a handful to go upfront which I hoped were sufficiently strong and attention-grabbing, and put my most personal piece at the end. Otherwise, I grouped the rest into clusters around a broad theme (war, for example, relationships, or bereavement), and tried to arrange a coherent flow across the book but with interesting variation. Even if you’re not planning to submit a collection, I’d recommend having a go at this; it’s a very revealing exercise in what your writing preoccupations have been.
Sadly, Reflex are no longer open for submissions. It’s a very tough time for small, independent presses. Do support them if you can.
DS: You live in the Yorkshire Wolds. Does this area of northern England influence your writing at all?
ST: Setting is a constant source of inspiration for me. A story will often grow out of a strong sense of a place. I’ll think of people who will react to it and place them there, but the setting itself is often the leading ‘character’.
The Yorkshire Wolds is less dramatic and well-known than the Dales or the North York Moors but has its own quiet beauty and carries deep layers of time. (@yorkswoldsweather posts some lovely photos on various socials.) My small town is surrounded by internationally important Iron Age burials, for example (which inspired my Flash Fiction Festival story, ‘The Horses, Beneath’).
I’ve lived in the north east of England all my life, bar eight years. I think it’s inevitable that its rich landscapes and historical contrasts, speech rhythms and vocabulary feed into my work in ways I’m not always conscious of. That’s my natural language. My most recent story, ‘Revelation, 1859’, was inspired by visiting Robin Hood’s Bay in February 2025 on what would have been my lovely mum’s 90th birthday, but drew on layers of memories of childhood Sundays out and fossil-hunting as an adult. A great slab of earth had recently slid down the cliff, leaving a small tree now growing on the beach. Sadly, no monster was revealed.
Should anyone be seeking bridgey inspiration, the historic Yarm Viaduct, iconic Tees Transporter or beautiful Humber Bridge are all significant bridges in my part of the world!
Sharon Telfer, Guest Editor
Sharon Telfer writes short and very short fiction near York in the North of England. Her flash fiction has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award (twice) and the Reflex Flash Fiction Prize, and been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. She was awarded the New Writing North/Word Factory Northern Short Story Apprentice in 2018 and placed second in the Bath Short Story Award 2020. Her work featured in the Test Signal anthology of the best contemporary Northern writing (Dead Ink Books/Bloomsbury). She was a founding editor at FlashBack Fiction, an online litmag showcasing historical flash fiction. Her flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published by Reflex Press and was longlisted for the 2022 Edgehill Short Story Prize. In 2021, she was a judge for the NFFD Microfiction Competition.