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Author: Ingrid Jendrzejewski

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Published on 1 Comment on Flash Flood 2019 is OPEN for submissions!

...But be quick!  Submissions are only open for a week, closing on 9 May 2019 at 23:59 BST (22:59 UTC).

The aim is simple: wherever you are in the world, we want your best flash fictions. The word limit is 500 words, but that's the only rule. Send us any subject, any genre, any style, any perspective...anything as long as it's flash!

All accepted stories will be published online at Flash Flood on National Flash Fiction Day, 15 June 2019 from 00:01 to 23:59 BST.  This year, we've got some slots reserved for unpublished writers, and we're also nominating for awards such as Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize.

Our guidelines have changed this year, so please have a read over our shiny new submission guidelines before you send your work.  If you'd like, you can also read about this year's editors.

We look forward to reading your words!

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Published on 4 Comments on Entries for the 2019 National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition are NOW OPEN!

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 Fiction, Litro, New Scientist, Physics World, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, LabLit, Flight Journal and many more) and has been included in a number of anthologies (The Dark Half of the Year,North by Southwest, We Can Improve You, Haunted, Salt Anthology of New Writing, Ripening, Sleep 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, Mslexia, Unthology 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.

Published on Leave a comment on Submissions for the 2019 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology are NOW OPEN!

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.

Published on Leave a comment on Introducing the new NFFD Artist in Residence

We're delighted and excited to welcome Jeanette Sheppard to the team as National Flash Fiction Day's official Artist in Residence.

Not only did Jeanette provide some images for one of last month's Flash Flood Advent Calendar writing prompts, but she has also produced the stunning skyline that now graces our website.

Where is this city and what is its flashy significance? More about this image will be revealed in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here's a little more about the artist....

Jeanette SheppardJeanette Sheppard is a short fiction writer and sketch artist.

Her most recent flash fictions can be seen in The Nottingham Review, Ellipsis Zine and Flash Fiction Festival Anthology: Two. Other stories have been published in a number of literary magazines, including Bare Fiction, Litro and The Lonely Crowd. One of her stories flies through the air courtesy of a vending machine at Edmonton Airport in Canada. She has been published in two National Flash Fiction Day anthologies and shortlisted in TSS Publishing’s Flash400 competition. She has also been a winner of the Mslexia Flashcard.

Jeanette’s art revolves around sketching on streets, in buildings, cafes, fields, train stations, anywhere that she happens to be, in ink and watercolour. Every month she runs Sketch Coventry, a self-led open meet up. Recently, she has provided the artwork for Diane Simmons’s collection of flash fiction about grief, Finding A Way, due to be launched in February 2019.

You can enjoy more of Jeanette's artwork and writing by visiting her website at jeanettesheppard.com or following her on Twitter at @InkLinked (writing) and @JinnySketches (art).

Published on Leave a comment on 2018 Flash Flood Advent Calendar

Christmas Fireworks

What better way to end the year than with some flash fiction fun?

Come and join us at Flash Flood for an Advent Calendar full of free writing prompts designed to give you a great head start when submissions open in 2019 for the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology and Microfiction Content , not to mention Flash Flood itself.

The first prompt has been posted here.

If you'd like to share your work or just have a chat about writing, feel free to join our private Facebook group.

Happy Writing!

 

Published on Leave a comment on The Future of National Flash Fiction Day

On Saturday 16th June this year, National Flash Fiction Day celebrated its seventh year!

NFFD was founded in 2012 by Calum Kerr, and since then we have published hundreds of flash fictions by hundreds of different authors across anthologies, FlashFlood, and other flashy projects. We’ve had numerous readings, launches, workshops, and other events around the country to celebrate flash fiction. This was all thanks to Calum, who decided that this year would be his last NFFD.

When Calum stepped down, the future of NFFD was uncertain, but we believe that the best way to say thank you was to keep NFFD going.  As of June 2018, National Flash Fiction Day will be run by three co-directors, Santino Prinzi, Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Diane Simmons, who will strive to keep the momentum going and build on what Calum has started.

To everyone who has been involved with National Flash Fiction Day in the past, thank you for all your work and passion, and we hope you join us for this next chapter in National Flash Fiction Day's story!

Published on Leave a comment on Introducing our New Volunteer Social Media Co-ordinator

We'd like to welcome to the National Flash Fiction Day team our newest member, Claire Thomson, who will be our Volunteer Social Media Co-ordinator!

Claire is currently an Editorial Assistant at Vintage Books. Before this, she worked in a press office and for a feminist literary magazine. From Scotland, she studied English Literature at the University of Glasgow and now lives in North London.

Published on Leave a comment on Happy National Flash-Fiction Day 2018
Yes, it's here again. And this is a short bulletin just to bring you up to date on all that is happening today.

We have, of course, the FlashFlood which starts at midnight and runs all the way through the day. A story will be published every 10 minutes on the blog, with a few extras across the middle of the day, bringing you a total of 148 wonderful, new flashes for you to enjoy.

Over the 7 years of NFFD this journal has had nearly 420,000 views, and we would love to be able to get even closer to the magical half million mark, so please do share the stories across your media and bring the joy to the world.
 
We also have a number of events going on around the country, including the launch of the novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone by Stephanie Hutton in Hanley, Stoke. This is preceded by a workshop and more information is here. 

There will also be a workshop and reading in Gloucester,

Our friends over at TSS Publishing (theshortstory.co.uk) are today launching a project to catalogue and celebrate the best in British and Irish Flash-Fiction over the next year. More information about this is on their Facebook Page.

And if you are in the Bristol area, there is so much to enjoy: a Flash-walk, two workshops, a panel on competitions,and the launch of the new anthology. All the details for that are on the Bristol Flash Facebook page. 

Speaking of the anthology, Ripening, it is now available to buy in both paper and Kindle formats. And although we're biased, we really think you need a copy or two in your life. 
And, as ever, there will be people publishing flashes, sharing their work, and generally enjoying the day all around the country and across the internet. One of them could be you, so why not celebrate the day by joining in by writing, sharing, or reading. 
National Flash-Fiction Day has become a staple in the calendar and the wonderful things that happen on the day are a testament to the enthusiasm of all the great writers and readers who make up the community. We're grateful for you all.

Enjoy the day, and keep flashing!

Calum Kerr
Co-Director
National Flash-Fiction Day
[Oh, and one last thing. This year we have had to start using a new service to feed the FlashFlood to our Facebook and Twitter pages. It's untested and we have no idea if it will work. So, if it should fail, please do visit https://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/ - every 10 minutes if you're particularly dedicated - and share the links to the stories on your social media so we can ensure everyone gets their work seen by the world. Thank you! ]
Copyright © 2018 National Flash-Fiction Day, All rights reserved. 

Published on Leave a comment on National Flash-Fiction Day 2018 is nearly here.
In case you don't know, this year National Flash-Fiction Day will be on 16th June. And, as ever, we have a range of things going on. 
The main launch for the day will once again be in Bristol, where there will be a Flash Walk, two workshops (one by Alison Powell and one by me, Calum Kerr) as well as the traditional reading event in the evening - to launch the new anthology Ripenings (right - available soon) -  and the even more traditional visit to the pub afterwards. And there will also be a very interesting panel discussion on what competition judges are looking out for. So that's one not to miss. More details of all these are on the website.

 
Other events include a Flash-Fiction Workshop and Reading in Gloucester, a panel on entering writing competitions and submitting to lit magazines.in Stoke, and the launch of Stephanie Hutton's first novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone.

Details are also on the website.

And, as ever. If you have an event we haven't listed, do let us know at nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com.
As usual for NFFD, our journal FlashFlood will be opening it's gates for submissions. The blog journal provides a deluge of flash for the Day, and has now received over 409,000 views.

Submissions open at midnight tonight, and then stay open for just 7 days. All the stories will appear on the 16th, available via the blog, or our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Stay tuned to http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/ to find out more.
And finally, on a more personal note, I have to announce that this will be my last National Flash-Fiction Day.

I originally set the day up way back in 2012 and could never have imagined how it - and flash-fiction in the UK - would have blossomed. There are now many amazing flash things happening and I am so proud of the part that NFFD has played in it all.

I have been helped across the years by many, many wonderful people - Tim Stevenson, Amy Mackelden, Kevlin Henney, the editors of FlashFlood, and too many others to mention. In the last few years, particularly, Santino Prinzi, has taken over much of the heavy lifting associated with NFFD and deserves all the medals.

For me, though, it's time for me to move on and see what's next. The future of NFFD is currently undecided but we'll let you know as soon as we know what it is. 
So, that's it for now. Be sure to check out the website, the blogs, the social media, and have a great day on the 16th.

Here's to another wonderful National Flash-Fiction Day.

Yours
Calum Kerr
Co-Director of National Flash-Fiction Day
 

Published on Leave a comment on Happy National Flash-Fiction Day 2017!

Hello everyone,

Yes, it's here again. This is the sixth National Flash-Fiction Day (and they said it wouldn't last). 
As ever, there are a number of events happening all over the UK and beyond, details of which you can read on our website at http://host2021.temp.domains/~nationo0/events.html
Earlier in the year, we ran our micro-fiction competition, and you can read the winning stories at http://host2021.temp.domains/~nationo0/results.html
We also took submissions for our anthology, Sleep is a Beautiful Colour, which you can now buy online at Amazon in both paperback and kindle versions. The book also includes all the competition winners, as well as wonderful stories from some of the best flash-fictioneers in the world. 
The anthology will also be on sale at the launch, this evening, as part of the UK's first ever Flash-Fiction Literary Festival, in Bath. Details about that are online at https://bathflashfictionaward.com/2017/03/flash-fiction-festival-sat-24th-sun-25th-june-2017/
And, last but not even a little bit least, we are once again flooding the internet with flash-fiction with our FlashFlood. You can read the stories as they appear on our blog (http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.co.uk) but also through our Facebook and Twitter feeds. And, don't worry, the stories will remain on the blog after tomorrow, along with over 1000 stories from previous issues.
Once again, it will be a massive day to celebrate the smallest prose fictions, and thanks must go to all who help organise the day, and all of you for your support in writing and reading and taking part in the day.
Special thanks to my co-Director Tino Prinzi, without whom the day wouldn't have happened. 
And that's enough of me. The Flood is now flooding, the day is unfolding before you. So go forth and Flash!

Calum Kerr
co-Director