22 JUNE 2017 – National Flash Fiction Day
June 22, 2017 is our shortest day of the year — and the day we know and love as National Flash Fiction Day.
The competition this year will open February 15 – April 30. The 2017 judges are acclaimed poets Michael Harlow and Emma Neale.
New this year! A youth category, with award-winning children’s writer Fleur Beale and NFFD 2016 winner Heather McQuillan as judges.
Winners will be announced this year at our main events in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. National awards, regional awards, micro awards, guest readers and more!
This year, we will also run the third annual Micro Madness series, in which 22 micros will be selected for inclusion, and three winners will be selected from the 22 finalists, and the second annual Tiny Tales series, which included stories of 250 characters — that’s characters, not words! 2016’s Micro Madness winners can be found here; the 2016 Tiny Tales series is here.
Last year’s winning stories were published in a special issue of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.
More news and updates, including other publications and competitions involving New Zealand writers of compressed fiction, can be found on our Flash News page.
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COMPETITION
National Flash Fiction Day is New Zealand’s celebration of the shortest form of fiction writing, on the shortest day of the year. See the Competition page for details about the 2017 competition.
The 2012-15 competitions saw approximately 300 entries; 2016 was a banner year, with over 500 submissions.
You can find the winners from previous years by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page. And you can read them, published at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction. See the Archives page for links.
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EVENTS
National Flash Fiction Day celebrates each year with prize-giving ceremonies and presentations by the judges as well as readings key flash all across Aotearoa. Our three main events will take place take place each year simultaneously in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington, on June 22. Details about the 2017 events will be posted on our Events page.
contact: nationalflash [at] gmail [dot] com
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CENTRAL COMMITTEE
National Flash Fiction Day is an organisation run by volunteers in the writing and business community who believe that some of the best things come in small packages.
Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor based in the Bay of Islands. She edits at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and Blue Five Notebook. Her first online project was the acclaimed 52|250 A Year of Flash. Michelle has published poetry, fiction, travel writing, reviews and creative nonfiction in numerous print and online magazines. She is Assistant Editor of the international and acclaimed Best Small Fictions series (Braddock Avenue Press) and was an associate editor of Flash Fiction International (W W Norton, 2015); she has guest edited at Smokelong Quarterly and judged the Bath Flash Fiction Award. Her work will be included this year in Memoirs of the Feminine Divine: Voices of Power & Invisibility (US), Manifesto: A Political Anthology (NZ), Borderlands & Crossroads: Writing the Motherland (Canada) and the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (UK), among other publications. She is working in 2017 on a New Zealand anthology of prose poetry, flash and experimental writing with Frankie McMillan and James Norcliffe. Michelle lives on her sailboat Momo, named after the novel by Michael Ende. More at michelleelvy.com.
Raised and educated in Dubai and Scotland, Katherine Honeyman completed her education in New Zealand and returned to the United Kingdom where she worked with the newly established World Association of Nuclear Operators in London. Her role included liaison between Moscow, Atlanta, Paris and Tokyo regional centres and management of the WANO inaugural meeting in Moscow. Katherine then assisted Grant Dalton, Skipper and CEO of ‘New Zealand Endeavour’, in preparations for the Round the World Yacht Race then pursued her career in film and television as a production executive with South Pacific Pictures. The family moved to Fiji for several years and following the coup and returned home in 2007. Art, literature and animal welfare remain her passions.
Frankie McMillan‘s most recent collection of short fictions is My Mother and the Hungarians (CUP 2016). She is the author of The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other stories and two poetry collections:Dressing for the Cannibals and There are no horses in heaven; her work has also appeared in the 2008 and 2009 Best NZ Fiction anthologies as well as Flash Fiction International. Winner of the 2015 Ursula Bethell writing residency at Canterbury University, Frankie judged the NFFD competition in 2014 and was the national competition winner in 2013 and 2015 (in 2015 taking 1st and 3rd prize). She is working in 2017 on an anthology of prose poetry, flash and experimental writing with Michelle Elvy and James Norcliffe.
James Norcliffe has published a collection of short stories, eight collections of poetry, and several award-winning novels for young people. His newest collection is Dark Days at the Oxygen Café (VUP 2016). In 2016, with Joanna Preston, he edited Leaving the Red Zone: poems from the Canterbury Earthquakes (Clerestory Press). His most recent book for young people is Felix and the Red Rats (Longacre/Random), released in 2012. He had a long time involvement with Takahē magazine and has edited anthologies of poetry and of writing by young people. He is poetry editor for the Christchurch Press. James has been awarded writing fellowships both in NZ and overseas including the Burns Fellowship, the IWP / Iowa Residency, and residencies in Hobart, Massey University and Otago University College of Education. He publishes poetry widely internationally and regularly reads at festivals and occasions throughout NZ and overseas. His flash fiction appeared in Flash Fiction International (Norton, 2015). He is editor at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and is working in 2017 on an anthology of prose poetry, flash and experimental writing with Michelle Elvy and Frankie McMillan.
CITY CHAIRS
Auckland: Ivy Alvarez
Ivy Alvarez is the author of The Everyday English Dictionary (London: Paekakariki Press, 2016), Hollywood Starlet (Chicago: dancing girl press), Disturbance (Wales: Seren, 2013) and Mortal. Her work appears in many publications, including Best Australian Poems (2009 and 2013), with several poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. Born in the Philippines and raised in Australia, she lived many years in Wales before moving to New Zealand. www.ivyalvarez.com
Contact Ivy at: ivyalvarez+NFFD@gmail.com
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Christchurch: Brindi Joy
Brindi Joy has lived in Seattle, Denver, New Orleans and currently Christchurch, where she makes the most of the mountains and the sea. Her fiction has appeared in Landfall, JAAM, Leaving the Red Zone: An Anthology of Earthquake Poetry, Sweet As: Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories, the Christchurch Press, Flash Frontier and Takahē. Brindi was the Canterbury Regional Winner in the 2012 National Flash Fiction Day Award. This is her fourth year supporting the Canterbury Flash Fiction Day event.
Contact Brindi at: nationalflash@gmail.com
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Dunedin: Iona Winter
Iona Winter (Pākehā/Māori) lives in Karitane, Otago – the land of her tupuna. Her writing has appeared in Headland, Halo, The Island Review, Flash Frontier and various online publications. With a collection of prose and poetry submitted into the hands of publishers, she is currently working on a novella-in-flash. In 2016 Iona was awarded the Headland Frontier Prize for Best Short Story, and represented Ōtepoti Dunedin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Sara Dawn Johnson grew up in Seattle, where she’s still got crates filled with notebooks of unfinished stories stored. She had her first piece of fiction published in the 4th grade as Thoreau Elementary School’s Young Author of 1985. Sara moved to New Zealand with her husband and two daughters in 2012 by sailing their home, a 38-foot sailboat, across the Pacific Ocean. She’s written travel and health non-fiction for publications such as theatlantic.com, Cruising World and Pacific Yachting. Sara is the co-author of Voyaging with Kids: A Guide to Family Life Afloat and author of How to Move to New Zealand in 31 Easy Steps. She is still working on publishing her second piece of fiction. Sara lives in Wellington with her family and a cat named Mouse.
Contact Sara at: sara@saradawnjohnson.com
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NFFD IN THE NEWS
NZ Herald, 25 June 2016 — Heather McQuillan‘s winning story featured.
Flash on the radio! Sam Averis and Nod Ghosh read their NFFD short-listed stories;Brindi Joy discusses NFFD 2016 with Morrin Rout and reads her Micro Madness. Plains FM.
The Sunday Star Times, 14 June 2015 (click on the link for article)
Plains FM Radio, 16 June 2015 — Morrin Rout talks with James Norcliffe and Nod Ghosh about the fine art of flash, NFFD, Flash Fiction International and the events scheduled in Christchurch. Go here to listen.
Radio New Zealand, 21 June 2015 — interview with Eileen Merriman and Nod Ghosh, the creatives behind the Micro Madness series at NFFD this year. Plus other micros read on the radio by participants in last year’s month of mad micro fun, Patrick Pink, Sally Houtman and Heather McQuillan. Go here for the programme and schedule.
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ON THE RADIO: NFFD’s INAUGURAL EVENT
In 2012, Radio New Zealand Arts on Sunday hosted a discussion of National Flash Fiction Day and flash fiction in general to help launch the inaugural event. You can hear the radio interview and hear some flash fiction on the Radio NZ website.
And this was one of Radio NZ’s most popular podcasts in 2012 — so thank you to Radio NZ, listeners and flash fiction fans!
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QUERIES
Thank you for visiting this site.Please direct all questions to nationalflash[at]gmail[dot]com
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