June 22 – FIRST PLACE
Tom O’Brien – London, UK
Father Buried Queenie in the Small Field
Tim pushed the brown stained keys on his grandmother’s valve radio into place, to feel the click.
The inside lit up and he put his nose against the mesh to visit the futuristic city inside. Smelled burning dust. If little spaceships flew between the tubes and pillars, he would have been delighted, not surprised.
But today he needed it to make noise. He twisted the dial to move the red wire between London, Luxembourg and Athlone but static and haunted music wouldn’t block out the slice of shovel into hard earth as his father buried Queenie in the small field.
Tom O’Brien is an Irishman living in London. His Novella-in-Flash Straw Gods is published by Reflex Press and he has Homemade Weather due out this June as the winning entry in the Retreat West Novelette-in-Flash competition anthology. Ad Hoc Fiction will be publishing another Novella-in-Flash, One for The River, later this year. His flash fiction and short stories can be found in print in various anthologies such as Blink-Ink and Bath Flash Fiction (forthcoming) as well as many sites around the web including Ellipsis Zine, Reflex, Spelk and 50-Word Stories. He’s on Instagram and twitter @tomwrote. His website is www.tomobrien.co.uk
June 21 – SECOND PLACE
Rob Walton – Whitley Bay, UK
Brautigan Banquet
She gives the dirty smoke-stained copy of Richard Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn to Michael at number 7. She knows he has lost, knows he is lost. He smells it, washes his hands, puts it down, picks it up. At night, he circles, crosses out, underlines words, puts it on her doorstep, knocks, retreats. She ticks and crosses next to his annotations and draws stick figures in the margin. One is clearly Michael, smiling. He draws a Chinese take-away banquet and sends it back. She sketches chopsticks and tea. He phones. She grins, looks for another book.
Rob Walton grew up in Scunthorpe, and now lives in North Shields. His short fiction and poetry for adults and children appears in various magazines and anthologies. His flashes have been published by 101 words (US), Bangor Literary Journal, Blue Fifth Review (US), Flash Frontier (NZ), Ham, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Number Eleven, National Flash Fiction Day anthologies, Paper Swans, Popshot, Pygmy Giant, Reflex, Spelk and others. He is a past winner and current judge of the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day micro-fiction competition.
June 20 – THIRD PLACE
Cristina Schumacher – Hamilton, Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand
The Consequences of a Change
We were all at home when the floor started to move. The wood began to bulge where the chandelier cast its brightest light. Initially it seemed like a reaction to moisture, how it swelled, but it didn’t stop there. In our house a mountain began to form. Perplexed, we watched as it grew. Purposefully. Some added ladders and steps to its sides. Some stared, day after day, unwilling to believe their eyes. Still others turned their backs on the mountain, but for them life became a kind of hell. Because you cannot ignore the topography of where you live.
Cristina Schumacher is a Brazilian New Zealander who works as the Language Programme Director of EarthDiverse, a Hamilton-based organisation that provides diversity education and training. She has published several manuals, textbooks and methods for Brazilian learners of foreign languages and acted as a consultant to large international companies. While Cristina’s first publication was a flash fiction book, Depois de Séculos (Centuries After), it took her almost half of her lifetime and a new life in New Zealand to get back to publishing fiction. This flash piece emerges from this pleasurable turn in her career as an author.
June 19
Karen Jones – Glasgow, Scotland
Last Visit
We know Mum’s crazy because she believes people used to have coffee meetings where they chatted and laughed and drank things called cappuccino and flat white and mocha, and that some of the coffees had frothy patterns on them, and coffee made you kind of high.
State Coffee is black. State Coffee makes you calm. State Coffee is the correct coffee.
In the home – she calls it a prison – Mum asks for hot milk and, using a tiny whisk, froths up something like her fantasies. She smiles, beckons us to, “Look!”
We’ll report the illegal whisk. And the smiles.
Karen Jones is a flash and short story writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She’s Special Features Editor for New Flash Fiction Review. Her novella-in-flash, When It’s Not Called Making Love, is published by Ad Hoc Fiction.
June 18
Russ Bickerstaff – Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Just Relax
I just want you to know that nothing is wrong. I know that it probably sounds weird coming from a total stranger, but I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me. I’m talking about how nothing is wrong and I’m not doing anything wrong. Because I’m not doing anything right now. (At least…nothing that I can identify right now.) Nothing is wrong because I’m not responsible for anything that I’m doing right now. Nothing is wrong that I can do anything about because I’m not doing anything that I have any control over. Just try not to worry.
Russ Bickerstaff is a critic and author living in Milwaukee, WI.
June 17
Sudha Balagopal – Phoenix, Arizona, USA
The Picture of Meditation
The yogi at the Grand Canyon; a jogger by the rim.
The yogi in a headstand on the cliff, a man on the path hollering about the hovering hawk.
The yogi, eyes closed in meditation, cannot hear the runner’s shouted warnings about the steep incline into red-shaded canyon.
The yogi, defying gravity, remains still—as the screeching bird circles, as the runner slides on gravel, as dislocated rocks stut-stut-stutter to the bottom.
The yogi in the inversion offers up naked feet onto which the hawk swoops and alights, then preens his feathers in the light of the rising sun.
Sudha Balagopal’s short fiction appears in Monkeybicycle, Matchbook, Smokelong Quarterly and Split Lip Magazine among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her novella-in-flash is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction.She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50. Her micro, first published in The Dribble Drabble Review, will appear in Best Microfiction 2021 More at www.sudhabalagopal.com
June 16
S J Mannion – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand
A True Romantic
I met a man. And on meeting him, on simply being interested by him, I am rejuvenated. I am reminded of who I was and am and still could be. And though age and experience have only made me more vulnerable, I am reminded of the eternal benediction of the promising encounter. And of course, the tenacity of hope. I am reminded that even now, perhaps even especially now, I still believe in love. I still believe that one can be centred in two. That each one can be centred in two. I still believe in the whole damn story.
S J Mannion is an Irish writer living in New Zealand. When she can she writes – when she can’t she reads. “It takes a long time to make a short tale.”
June 15
Marjory Woodfield – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand
In the Night Library
Lucy walks through the wardrobe. Lamplight casts shadows. Mr Tumnus wears a red knitted scarf, carries parcels wrapped in brown paper.
Pascal’s red balloon takes him all the way to Bagan. Below the rooftops of Santiago de Compostela pilgrims sing and hold scallop shells. St James casts a net. Too far away to see the balloon. Across the desert falling stars are close enough to catch.
He cuts a square of pure darkness to take home to his mother in their perfectly clean apartment high above a Paris street, where she sweeps and throws open windows to catch the light.
Marjory Woodfield has been published by the BBC, Atrium, Blue Nib, The High Window and others. She was awarded third prize in the 2020 Yeovil International Literary Prize and commended in the Ver Poetry Competition. She’s been shortlisted for the Cinnamon Literature Award, Bath Novella-in-Flash Competition and Proverse Poetry Prize. In 2019 she won the Dunedin Robert Burns Poetry competition and appeared in Pale Fire (Frogmore Press) Best Small Fictions (Sonder Press) and with one eye on the cows (Bath Flash Fiction). Currently, she is the recipient of a Cinnamon Press (UK) writing bursary.
June 14
Bayveen O’Connell – Dublin, Ireland
Romeo and Juliet
He proposed with a grenade ring, and welded my wedding bouquet from broken chains. Making vows in the rubble, we gave each other garlands of bullet casings. In the presence of jolted spirits, rotting flesh and broken bones, we danced a rat-a-tat tango through a mine field. With hipflasks of blood, ours and theirs, his and mine, we toasted our union. While in my belly, a white dove stirred.
Bayveen O’Connell has words in Fractured Lit, Janus Literary, Splonk, Bending Genres, the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology (UK), The Forge Lit and others. She won third prize in the Janus Literary Story Prize 2021 and received a Best Microfiction nomination in 2019. She lives in Dublin and is inspired by myth, history and travel. @bayveenwriter
June 11
Vivian Thonger, Kerikeri, Aotearoa New Zealand
Years passed, we never mowed the lawn and the front door still stuck
Summertime homework: in bikinis, blankets on grass, munching fragrant apples off the tree, my sister’s cat stretched alongside.
The balcony, purple-perfumed, wisteria-wrapped—where I’d sometimes hide and cry. But also: the giant pink bath where we could both lie submerged, entwined, mermaid-haired.
My roaming hamsters gnawing at Mum’s Scandinavian furniture. She swore at them, brandishing her tiny glass of neat vermouth, and we sang, raucously, along with the stereo: Silence is Golden, Golden, Golden.
We drank in visitors: lodgers, family, colleagues. Every suppertime, the house, our sanctuary, opened its arms.
And one day, inevitably, Dad turned up.
Poet, writer and actor/performer/percussionist, Vivian Thonger hones her skills with several virtual and actual Northland groups, including the mighty Bay of Islands Writing Group. She’s working on a chopped-up memoir with her sister Caroline.
June 13
Denise Bayes – Barcelona, Spain
The Lure of Sequins
Sweep on a shimmer of turquoise eye shadow.
Sequins and tulle piled in the dressing up box. José enveloped his body, parading across the playground.
Remembers his infant teacher’s spiteful words to Mama. Angry tears accompanied him home.
‘My boy. Un bicho raro.’
Attach false eyelashes.
‘No son of mine…’
Fluttering lashes flicker over the purple bruise. Dad’s fist exploding his teenage son’s cheekbone. Distance has failed to fade scars within.
A slick of crimson lip-gloss.
Tears threaten his careful maquillage. José brushes away the sadness, smiles at his reflection. Sashays into the embrace of the anonymous city streets.
Denise Bayes is an English primary school teacher living in Barcelona, Spain. She writes flash fiction and short stories, and has had some success in Writing Magazine, Retreat West and Flash 500. The power of Zoom has allowed her to be a virtual member of Harrogate Writers’ Group during the past year.
June 13
Desna Wallace – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand
Rubbish Day
On the day of your funeral twelve black rubbish bags lined the footpath outside your home. I watched from my bedroom window as the bin man heaved your belongings up and over the side of the truck into oblivion. Your funeral took fifteen minutes and of all the conversations we’d had over the last twenty years, the last one stayed with me. My family don’t care, you said. Course they do, I said, but like everything else, you were always right.
By day Desna Wallace is a school librarian and tutor for the Write on School for Young Writers. She loves putting pen to paper whenever she gets a chance and seeing what happens next. She lives in Christchurch, New Zealand
June 12
Sam Payne – Plymouth, UK
Erosion
When he’s done with the silent treatment, Carl insists on a trip to the Grand Canyon. It’s not his thing, but he loves you and God knows he’s just trying to make an effort here.
A ranger smiles, tells you to be careful near the rim. The ground beneath your feet is paper thin.
Carl wants to know why you’re always flirting with other men.
You apologise, yet his words are as cold as the Colorado River and they’re carving your body into a new shape but you’re not the Grand Canyon, you’ll not be beautiful when he’s done.
Sam Payne holds a BA in English Literature from The Open University and an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University. Her work has appeared in Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Popshot Quarterly and Unbroken Journal. In 2020, she won 1st prize in Flash 500 and placed 3rd in the Bath Flash Fiction Awards.
June 12
Caroline Thonger – Switzerland
Not
He’s not hanging in a tangle of hooks and pulleys
No purple bruises on his face
No arm plastered no pelvis encased in bandages
I’m not shocked walking into the soulless hospital ward
My nostrils are not twitching with odours of
Disinfectant and morphine and despair and death
His voice does not croak out a faux-cheery greeting
Belying the seriousness of his injuries
The doctors have not denied his mental state
My mother is not estranged from him
She has not refused to accompany me
I’m not twenty-one
Not missing my sister
Dad has not jumped under a train
London-born Caroline Thonger lived for thirty years in Stratford-upon-Avon, working as a multi-lingual tourist guide. Spare-time writing included assistant editor on Writers’ Forum; editor of various inhouse magazines; co-founder of the Stratford Writers’ Festival. Published in the UK in 2007, her book The Banker’s Daughter is a biography of her German grandmother. Since emigrating to Switzerland in 2008, Caroline has freelanced as translator/proofreader; as Chief Editor of Hello Switzerland, and then of Offshoots 13. Recent editing work has included collaborating on Offshoots 15. Currently co-writing a book with her sister in New Zealand, Caroline’s passion is skiing/snowshoeing in winter, mountain hiking in summer—when not volunteering as Secretary of Geneva Writers’ Group.
June 11
Jenna Heller – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand
The Mirror
White t-shirt, sleeves turned up, loose black pants. Dancing, twisting, and the way she moves is like a murmuring or the swirling heat of a Nor’west wind arching out on the Canterbury plains. Short hair, side-swept. Mesmerising. Definitely queer. Tilted. The face in the mirror… You can’t not look. Eye candy. You are spellbound. Full of bluster and smooth confidence. You wink. She winks. You fall into her eyes. Your eyes. Trace the jawline. Your jawline. Caress the curves. Your curves. Pull up the t-shirt. Your t-shirt. Unbutton the pants. Your pants. Lock eyes. Your eyes. Breathe. Then fly solo.
Jenna Heller won the New Zealand National Flash Fiction Day competition in 2020. Her writing appears in Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2021. She is a tutor at WRITE ON: School for Young Writers in Ōtautahi and she is hard at work on her first short fiction collection.
June 11
Pam Morrison – Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand
That Path
The pathway to number 4 is riddled with hieroglyphs, uneasy with meaning. Scribbling who knows what up the pitched concrete. One hundred and five years will do that to a path. Make calligraphy with a heaving unedited pen: hoar frosts slapping ice on every spurt of weed. Then between times, mad heat that keeps beating on and on. Plus the slam of man boots, the rattle and metal of wheelbarrows. Such a heft and haul to get up that broken, shitty old path. Only for the stone-hearted, surely. Stand on a crack marry a rat. That’s that! No way out.
Pam Morrison is a Dunedin-based former journalist who has turned her hand to creative writing. She was a Regional Winner in the New Zealand Flash Fiction competition 2019 and her stories have been placed second and third in the London Independent Story Prize and Flash 500 Competition respectively. Her work has also been published in the Bath Flash Fiction anthology.
June 10
Aaron Blaker – Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand
The parsley in Aleppo looks like the parsley in Dunedin
In a room overlooking a garden, boy-men sit together.
Fatima, though, sits with her mother.
The boy-men step forward singly, recount what they’ve learned, in this room, in the camps.
Fatima rises, flows beyond them, speaks of six years waiting for life to begin. Her mother weeps, not understanding a word.
Afterwards, Fatima kneels, picks parsley for the evening meal.
Aaron Blaker lives and writes in Ōtepoti Dunedin. He works with international and refugee background students at Otago Polytechnic, where this micro is set. This is close to the shortest story he has yet written.
June 10
Mary Thompson – London, UK
Nothing but X
When on the brink of her new normal, people offered advice, practical tips they knew would help, tips she could have read in books or online. If only she’d wanted.
‘I am your manual,’ they said. ‘Your handy little guide to death. Hearing is the last sense to go, you know.’
But what she longed for was the hoot of a barn owl on a Welsh hill at dawn, the gentle contracting of a feline claw or a hamper overflowing with Prosecco, Manchego and sea-salt crackers from a village in Devon, with a handwritten note that said nothing but X.
Mary Thompson is an Academic English teacher from London. In 2020 she won a BIFFY 50 award (Best British & Irish Flash Fiction), and her story, ‘The Swan, the Sheep and the Bejeweled Mirror’, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her piece, ‘Ladybird’, was included in Best Microfiction 2020 and her flash collection, ‘Reality Raw’, was Highly Commended in Ellipsis Zine‘s 2020 competition. Mary tweets at @MaryRuth69.
June 09
Mike Crowl – Oamaru, Aotearao New Zealand
An attempt at Cancel Culture
That a fellow academic would speak so demeaningly!
I ‘don a mantle of faux righteousness, and even fauxer courage,’ to quote a writer I recently read. Of course, L’Académie Française would disdain fauxer, which goes against all their glorious grammatical rules. L’Anglais maltraite un mot français!
I ignore the academic’s jibe. Jibe: an American colloquial noun.
Wait, it’s also a verb: to shift from one side to the other when running before the wind, as a fore-and-aft sail or its boom.
As my Jibist is now doing. Mouth running. Voice booming.
I close my eyes. Think scholarly thoughts.
Mike Crowl is a writer, pianist and composer, now in his eighth decade. Since 2014 he has published three children’s fantasies for middle-grade readers, and has written a non-fiction title on dealing with prostate issues. He’s been working on a fourth children’s book for the last two or three years, and it continues to refuse to lay down and do as it’s told. His flash fiction has appeared frequently in the Flash Frontier pages. After living most of his life in Dunedin, he recently moved – unexpectedly – an hour and a half north to Oamaru.
June 09
Anita Arlov – Tamaki Makaurau / Auckland Aotearoa New Zealand
Half Bianca
I stopped vacuuming where the hall carpet ended and the floor dipped to her bare boards. Some Saturdays she took the hint.
I heard her bed migrate from centre – where I could catch a glimpse – to behind the door swing. She picked out a feature wall in Pillar Box red. Swapped her wardrobe for a strung broomstick.
She left home. It’s been a year.
Down come the nets. The vacuum discovers curiosities under her bed. A starfish stud. That lost dream catcher.
Test pots soothe the bloodshot wall. Apple Pulp. Black White. Even a Half Bianca.
Anita Arlov writes poems and flash and occasionally judges comps and runs workshops. She hosts the monthly gig Inside.Out Open Mic for Writers. Anita won the Divine Muses Emerging Poet Competition in 2017, and convened a team that staged the NZ Poetry Conference & Festival-Auckland 2017. In 2018 she gained first place in NZ’s National Flash Day Competition and placed second in the June 2019 Bath Flash Fiction competition. She is widely published in journals and anthologies including Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa/NZ, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Flash Frontier, The Phare, takahē, Best of Auckland 2020 and Eight Poems 2020. https://authors.org.nz/author/anita-arlov/
June 08
Sherry Morris – Scottish Highlands, UK
How to Manage Every-Other-Saturday Lunchtime with His Kids
Ensure each child selects a drinking glass *first*. Then choose yours.
Favourites change swiftly. You’ll always pick wrong.
Justify why:
you don’t have Coco Puffs, Pringles and J2O on hand,
tea towels hang near the cooker, not the sink,
plates sit on the first shelf, not the second.
Recognise there’s no satisfactory answer to these hurled questions.
Sit statue-still and morgue-silent while they peek and glare at you—their preferred method of communication.
When they sneak upstairs, rifle through your toiletries, pocket your lipstick, perfume samples and travel-size creams, let them. One day they’ll understand you didn’t steal their dad.
Originally from America’s Heartland, Sherry Morris writes prize-winning flash fiction and short stories from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she watches clouds, pets cows and scribbles words. In 2020, she joined the BBC Scottish Voices writer development programme and is working on a script. She is a Northwords Now board member and reads for the wonderfully wacky Taco Bell Quarterly. Her first published short story was about her Peace Corps experience in Ukraine. She posts her work on www.uksherka.com and Twitter: @Uksherka
June 08
Diana Burns – Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Face down
After the picnic she lay face down on the grass, her giant eye at the level of the daisies, breathing in the sweet scent of summer.
Her eye watched a disciplined army of ants carry off the feast of sandwich crumbs. She could destroy their intricate organisation with one heavy step. Was this how it felt to be God? To decide who lives and who dies?
No. There was no plan to it. No decision. Her mother, like the ants, had just trudged on, doing her dutiful best with crumbs, till she couldn’t anymore. Till she ran out of summers.
Diana Burns is a writer, journalist and trainer from Wellington. She loves words and language in all its forms, and has written numerous articles and short stories. She hopes to write a novel, and will probably spend the rest of her life trying to be a better writer.
June 07
Claire Beynon – Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand
As in all things, the key is balance
I might not want to be as much of an Eeyore as I am but it may be my fate to be the grey donkey in the room. Gravity’s a bitch for those who can soar. I agree. Yet gravity seems to be the defining force of my nature and a physical fact to boot.
I’ve been thinking how differently you and I approached yesterday’s pruning. There is in you a large measure of instinct; in me an equal element of control.
So intent were we both on doing right by the rhododendron, we failed to consult with the mistletoe.
Claire Beynon is a Dunedin-based artist, writer and interdisciplinary researcher. In addition to her solo practice, she works collaboratively on a diverse range of projects with fellow artists, writers, scientists and musicians in New Zealand and abroad. www.clairebeynon.com | www.manyasonemao.com
June 06
Tim Saunders – Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand
Vacancy
We weren’t allowed to see him in hospital.
We weren’t allowed to have a proper funeral.
He was here, then he was sick, then he was gone. They sealed him in a coffin, adjusted the elastic bands that held their masks in place.
We held our own funeral. In the kitchen. Like a birthday party, but the opposite. We stood around framed photos, black and white and colour and flat.
We sang sad songs until Mum said, ‘Enough. Sad songs only say so much, and we need to save some for Christmas.’
Tim Saunders farms sheep and beef near Palmerston North. He has had poetry and short stories published in Turbine|Kapohau, takahē, Landfall, Poetry NZ Yearbook and Flash Frontier, and he won the 2018 Mindfood Magazine Short Story Competition. He placed third in the 2019 and 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Awards, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His first book, This Farming Life, was published by Allen & Unwin in August 2020.
June 06
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Maracas
You tell them she’s taking a nap after crawling around the house, poking her hands in the rice canisters, digging mud from the flowerpots, but the neighbors don’t listen. Neither does your husband. Women sprinkle her with jasmine incense and wrap her in a white shroud. Your husband carries her out in his arms. You run after him but women hold you back. You hear her, crying at a distance. You rattle her maracas to pacify her but the wails grow louder. You shake the toys harder and harder. Then, smash them against the wall. Little beads spilling everywhere.
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Reflex Press, Flash Fiction Online and elsewhere. Her work has been highly commended in National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition, earned an honorable mention in Flash Fiction Magazine Editor’s Choice Award, and longlisted in SmokeLong Quarterly Grand Micro Contest. She has been nominated multiple times for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best Microfiction awards. She is currently an editor at Janus Literary. More at https://saraspunyfingers.com. Reach her @PunyFingers
June 05
Abha Iyengar – New Delhi, India
The Marriage Question
I am losing weight in my boyfriend’s house. I cannot order pastries, he tells me. I am desperate for him to pop the marriage question. I don’t expect him to get down on his knees or slip a ring through my finger, though I know a friend who had all this. She posted all the photos on Insta.
I cannot step out. His uncle, living in the house opposite, should not see me. I am sitting here, not going out, not eating anything sweet. I don’t want to think of a canary, or a cage, or the two together.
Abha Iyengar is an award winning, internationally published poet, author, editor and British Council certified creative writing mentor. Her flash fiction has appeared in Vestal Review, Jellyfish Review, Flash Frontier, Blink Noir, Pure Slush, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Spark, The Asian-Australian Anthology of Short Fiction and others. Her flash fiction was a finalist at Flash Mob 2013, an international event. ‘Flash Bites’ (Authors Press, 2013) is a collection of her flash fiction, and ‘Many Fish to Fry’ (Pure Slush, Australia, 2014) is a flash novella. It is a part of the Flash Collection at Seaborne Library, University of Chester, UK. She has recently curated and edited ‘Kintsugi’, an anthology of Indian flash fiction.
June 05
Sandy Feinstein – Reading, Pennsylvania & Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Becoming
Cyrano came to mind. Masked, she insisted, was easier. Severe when her brows crossed against her unclaimed beauty. And now she planned to lop off her breasts. Not to play the boy. It made no difference for a wheelie or MMA throw. Cropping. Or spite. Herself. Everyone.
To fit a pew hammered into place by her parents. She stroked a girl through the slats. Felt. No need to speak, name it.
She hadn’t known she’d a heart. It was always words. Putting them in their place. What a teacher could love. Too little for her writhing soul.
Sandy Feinstein’s flash fiction has appeared in Flash Frontier, Non-binary Review and, most recently, Rune Bear. She also publishes poetry and creative non-fiction about teaching, among other things.
June 04
Paula Moros – Whangārei, Aotearoa New Zealand
Code break
I don’t feel dangerous from the inside. Sure, I’ve tagged people in Facebook posts without asking. I’ve used exclamation marks in outlook correspondence. There was that thing where I left a tin of jackfruit on someone’s desk without leaving a note. See, there’s this invisible ink that only first-born children can see, and they use it to stamp improper nouns on your forehead. They’re done with dog whistles, that code’s been broken. In the future, I’ll take a poll before speaking; Is this too much? The point being, you want to encrypt your freak flag before it flies you.
Paula Moros lives in Ngararatunua, Whangārei, where she is part of a flash fiction writing group. She is originally from Tāmaki Makarau.
June 04
Jac Jenkins – Kohukohu, Aotearoa New Zealand
At a table, alone
Here is a glass, cupped in my hand. It is the right shape to carry the right vapours to my nose; the right shape from which to swill. The gleam from the overhead light is slick like moonspill on a wine sea.
Here is a paperback romance reading its sob-stuff to itself. Here is the major character. She is the right shape for watching time pass. The hero leaves flowers and paper cuts.
Here is a pair of scissors and a hank of my hair sharing stories in front of a candle. The candle is the right shape for shadow.
Jac Jenkins farms and writes in the Far North. In 2018 she co-founded Pavlova Press, an independent publishing company in Kerikeri, with her sister. Outside of her publishing work she has been editing a mixed-genre manuscript she began in her MA year and fixing fences.
June 03
Rose Collins – Whakaraupō / Lyttelton Harbour, Aotearoa New Zealand
löyly
Smack of raw cedar heavy over the burn-and-tick stove smoking its grey boulders in the orange roar. Give me parched heat then a plume of steam splitting kindling cracks. Give me sweat creeks carving out massifs; puddling the plank floor. Nostrils smart as heat laps at open skin, the scratch of birch branches and the memory of snowmelt washing the eaves. Breath thick as a lover or a god scorched ragged. Give me the blaze and then the glow. Salty as salmiakki. The dog pacing and his low howl. Claws clicking on the glass door, wanting to be let in.
Rose Collins has an MA from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters (2010). Her work has been shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Prize (2016), the Bridport Prize (2020) and the takahē Monica Taylor Poetry Prize (2020). She won the 2020 international Micro Madness Competition. Rose was the 2018 Writer in Residence at Hagley College, Christchurch. She lives in Whakaraupō / Lyttelton Harbour.
June 03
Diane Simmons – Bath, UK
No Record
The marriage certificate is blank where Agnes’s rank/profession should be. There’s no record of her time as a machinist at Rawlinson’s or of her promotion to Forewoman at the perambulator factory. It doesn’t show how she fought to hide her feelings for the perambulator factory owner’s son or her anguish when her future father-in-law insisted she cease working there. It doesn’t show either her subsequent worries about cake forks, side plates or her ignorance about how to address a maid. It just shows the evidence of two people who fell in love. Despite it all.
Diane Simmons is Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day (UK) and Co-Director of Flash Fiction Festivals, UK. She has been a reader for the international Bath Short Story Award, an editor for FlashFlood and has judged several flash competitions. Widely published and anthologised, her fiction has been placed in numerous competitions. Finding A Way (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019), her flash collection on the theme of grief, was shortlisted in the Best Short Story Collection category of the 2019 Saboteur Awards. Her novella-in-flash An Inheritance (V. Press, 2020) was shortlisted in the Best Novella category of the 2020 Saboteur Awards. Her novella-in-flash Top Table was recently shortlisted in the Retreat West Novelette Award.
June 02
Sara Hills – Warwickshire, UK
You Promise Me the Moon, But You’re No Jimmy Stewart
‘Somewhere out there,’ you say, pulling free, is my true soul mate.
I float in zero gravity, stare without blinking, and watch you disappear back into the marbled blue, a blip.
How can you be so sure it’s not you?
If I zoomed a million light years out, would you glow from the swirling galaxy of men, a homing beacon within a cluster of noise and dust?
If I zoomed 10 -12 meters in, would I find a clue etched in your carbon nucleus? Or would I only find the magic key that enables you to break my heart?
Sara Hills is a Pushcart-nominated writer from the Sonoran Desert. Her stories have been featured at SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, X-R-A-Y Literary, Reckon Review, Fractured Lit, New Flash Fiction Review and others. She’s had work included in the BIFFY50, commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Her debut flash collection, The Evolution of Birds, is forthcoming in 2021 with Ad Hoc Fiction. Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites.
June 02
Annette Edwards-Hill – Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
The First Kiss
She left the house with the dog and told her mother they were going for a walk.
From upstairs her mother watched the girl and dog cross the park, casting shadows on the green expanse. A taller third shadow joined them.
Even with binoculars her mother couldn’t tell they’d walked into a swarm of flies.
The first kiss was a mix of broken insects and the sweet smell of new pollen.
The dog tied to the tree watched them for a while but got bored and licked his paws as a magpie circled him. Her young nearby in a nest.
Annette Edwards-Hill lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Her short stories and flashes have been published in New Zealand and overseas. She was nominated for the Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the New Zealand Heritage Writing Awards in 2018 and the Sargeson Prize in 2020.
June 01
Martin Porter – Jersey
The Dream Catchers
They found a way to capture dreams and sell them, packaged into boxes wrapped with shiny paper fastened by glamourous ribbons. The more they sold, the more people demanded. When the boxes were opened the dreams would fly out and vanish as if they had never existed.
Some people left the boxes on shelves, hoarding them greedily, wanting more. Some opened them and lost everything. Some claimed the boxes were empty, but could not prove it. They kept on selling the boxes of dreams.
At night they rested, sleeping their dreamless sleep. And in the daytime, there they would lie.
Jersey born Martin Porter recently moved to the UK from Whangārei, New Zealand. He has been active in the micro-prose community over the last decade, as well as writing poetry. His work has been published in journals in Britain, USA and New Zealand, most recently in the “Take Flight” poetry collection, published in New Zealand.
June 01
Jude Higgins – Bath, UK
Falling Apart
Her flaws were creaking. She subsided more each year — couldn’t peg together the cracks that snaked through her personality. Conversations with others fell into gaps between her polite intentions and the harsh words that dropped like fairy tale toads from her mouth. ‘It’s a carnival of lost causes, unmasked,’ the therapist said. ‘Speak as the animal you are. Eat only pink foods.’ He was a tidy man, with a guarded face. She paid him money to suggest such things.
Jude Higgins is published in Flash Frontier, New Jones Street, The Nottingham Review, The Blue Fifth Review, The New Flash Fiction Review, NFFD anthologies among other places. She has won or been placed in several flash fiction competitions. Her debut flash fiction pamphlet, ‘The Chemist’s House’,was published by V.Press in 2017. She organises Bath Flash Fiction Award and directs Flash Fiction Festivals UK.Twitter: @judehwriter / Web: judehiggins.com
June 01
Matthew Scowcroft – Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Collections
The flat is near bare. Just a couple of boxes on the floor. He stands at the door blocking it. I can’t come in.
He holds onto the record for a second longer than is polite. Selling your precious history? Or not holding onto that which does not matter?
I slide it out of the sleeve. Hold it gently by the edges and hold it up to the light. Turn it over. Scuffs are a part of us, but this one’s got some deep scratches.
When I hand it back and shake my head, he looks relieved.
Matthew Scowcroft is a lawyer by profession, taking a break to raise two small children and making the most of some free time by learning to write better.
The 2021 Micro Madness Short List
(alphabetical by title)
A True Romantic by by S J Mannion
An attempt at Cancel Culture by Mike Crowl
As in all things, the key is balance by Claire Beynon
At a table, alone by Jac Jenkins
Becoming by Sandy Feinstein
Brautigan Banquet by by Rob Walton
Code break by Paula Moros
Collections by Matthew Scowcroft
Erosion by Sam Payne
Face down by Diana Burns
Falling Apart by Jude Higgins
Father Buried Queenie in the Small Field by Tom O’Brien
Half Bianca by Anita Arlov
How to Manage Every-Other-Saturday Lunchtime with His Kids by Sherry Morris
In the Night Library by Marjory Woodfield
Just Relax by Russ Bickerstaff
Last Visit by Karen Jones
löyly by Rose Collins
Maracas by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar
No Record by Diane Simmons
Not by Caroline Thonger
Nothing but X by Mary Thompson
Romeo and Juliet by Bayveen O’Connell
Rubbish day by Desna Wallace
That Path by Pam Morrison
The Consequences of a Change by Cristina Schumacher
The Dream Catchers by Martin Porter
The First Kiss by Annette Edwards-Hill
The Lure of Sequins by Denise Bayes
The Marriage Question by Abha Iyengar
The Mirror by Jenna Heller
The parsley in Aleppo looks like the parsley in Dunedin by by Aaron Blaker
The Picture of Meditation by Sudha Balagopal
Vacancy by Tim Saunders
Years passed, we never mowed the lawn and the front door still stuck by Vivian Thonger
You Promise Me the Moon, But You’re No Jimmy Stewart by Sara Hills
The 2021 Micro Madness Long List
(alphabetical by title)
We had a record number of submissions this year, so we have a wonderfully diverse Long List.
Congratulations to the writers of these micros! Short-listed stories will be posted beginning June 01.
A True Romantic by by S J Mannion
An attempt at Cancel Culture by Mike Crowl
As in all things, the key is balance by Claire Beynon
At a table, alone by Jac Jenkins
Becoming by Sandy Feinstein
Brautigan Banquet by by Rob Walton
Code break by Paula Moros
Collections by Matthew Scowcroft
Condolence by S J Mannion
Duck Egg by Aaron Blaker
Earth. Worm. by Michele Powles
Erosion by Sam Payne
Everyone needs their cell phones by Kate Mahony
Face down by Diana Burns
Falling Apart by Jude Higgins
Fantasy About the Man Reading The Grapes of Wrath at a Roadside Rest Area in the Bay of Plenty by Patrick Pink
Fantasy About the Man Reading To Kill a Mockingbird in Hagley Park Across from Masjid Al-Noor by Patrick Pink
Father Buried Queenie in the Small Field by Tom O’Brien
Franzstadt, 1980 by Claudia Bolz
Froglets by Anna Scaife
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon by Eleonora Balsano
Gloria Vanderbilt is Never Tagged by Amy Barnes
Grandmother’s footsteps by Vivian Thonger
Half Bianca by Anita Arlov
He loves me? by Pam Morrison
Holiday weekend by Jane Blaikie
How do you make love to a sailor? by Marissa Hoffmann
How to Manage Every-Other-Saturday Lunchtime with His Kids by Sherry Morris
I Can See You and Breathe by Angela Wilson
I look you over with my liquid eye, Virgo my star-sign by Gail Ingram
If it weren’t for the cushioning water by Anita Arlov
In the Night Library by Marjory Woodfield
Just Relax by Russ Bickerstaff
Last Train to Matsusaka by Mark Crimmins
Last Visit by Karen Jones
Left-overs by Alex Reece-Abbott
Lovers by Bryan Wang
löyly by Rose Collins
Maracas by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar
Mori by Susan Wardell
New Year’s Eve Party by Angela Trolove
No Record by Diane Simmons
Not by Caroline Thonger
Nothing but X by Mary Thompson
Offloading Passengers by Judy Darley
Preface to The Vulture Chronicles by Heather McQuillen
Romeo and Juliet by Bayveen O’Connell
Rubbish day by Desna Wallace
Send for Granny Harrold by Sue Kingham
She’s a Long Road by Melanie Dixon
Spiders come out in summer, like your secrets by Mary Francis
That Path by Pam Morrison
The Consequences of a Change by Cristina Schumacher
The Dream Catchers by Martin Porter
The effect of good news on a mollusc by Mary Francis
The First Kiss by Annette Edwards-Hill
The hot rush of summer by Louise Mangos
The key by Rob Walton
The Lure of Sequins by Denise Bayes
The Marriage Question by Abha Iyengar
The Mirror by Jenna Heller
The parsley in Aleppo looks like the parsley in Dunedin by by Aaron Blaker
The Picture of Meditation by Sudha Balagopal
Touring in Poland by Rose Collins
Vacancy by Tim Saunders
Wind-Birds by Michael Carson
Years passed, we never mowed the lawn and the front door still stuck by Vivian Thonger
You Promise Me the Moon, But You’re No Jimmy Stewart by Sara Hills
Thank you to our judges!
The 2021 Micro Madness judges are Grant Faulkner (San Francisco, USA) and Alison Glenny (Paekākāriki, Aotearoa New Zealand).
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He’s published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, Fissures (a collection of 100-word stories), and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. He has also published two books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide.
His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer.
Additionally, Grant serves on the National Writing Project’s Writer’s Council, Lit Camp’s Advisory Council, and Aspen Words’ Creative Council. He’s also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded. Follow him on Twitter at @grantfaulkner and on Instagram at @grantfaulkner.
Alison Glenny is a fiction writer whose work got shorter and shorter.
Her collection of prose poems and fragments, The Farewell Tourist, won the Kathleen Gratton poetry award in 2017 and was published by Otago University Press in 2018.
Her work was also included in Best Small Fictions 2019. In 2019 she was an Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury. She lives in Paekākāriki.