A Forward Prize nominee and Hawthornden Fellow, Mary-Jane Holmes has won the Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2020, Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize 2020, the Bridport Poetry prize, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash prize as well as the Bedford Poetry competition. She has also been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. Mary-Jane’s poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press. Her award-winning pamphlet Dihedral is published by Live Canon Press and her novella Don’t Tell the Bees is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her Lockdown poem ‘Letter from Baldersdale’ joins 20 other poems in the National Poetry Archive on their 20^th anniversary. Her newest collection of flash fiction will be published by V press in 2021.

Al Kratz lives in Iowa with his wife Kristy and their cat Tom Petty. He is the Managing Editor at New Flash Fiction Review and a co-founder of the Flash Monsters!!! blog. He is a three-time Short Lister at the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award including The Tony Bone Stories which was a Runner Up in the 2021 award judged by Michelle Elvy. His 2019 shortlisted novella, Off the Resting Sea, was published by above/ground press in 2021. More about his work can be found at Al Kratz – reading * writing * thinking.

Michael Loveday was judge of the 2019 and 2020 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Awards. He has published various articles about the novella-in-flash at SmokeLong Quarterly magazine, and chaired panel discussions/given talks on the form at the UK Flash Fiction Festival, the National Association of Writers in Education conference, and Novel Nights, Bristol, UK. He mentors writers through his online, one-to-one course at https://novella-in-flash.com/ and has helped writers prior to publication with a number of international publishers. He is a fan of films by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and has a soft spot for earnest Bruce Springsteen songs.

Tom O’Brien is an Irishman living in London. His Novella-in-Flash Straw Gods is published by Reflex Press and he has two more due this year – one from Retreat West and another from Ad Hoc Publishing. His work has been Pushcart and Best Microfictions nominated. His flash fiction 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 and has a class on Skillshare called Introducing the Novella-in-Flash. His website is www.tomobrien.co.uk.

Meg Pokrass (Editor, Best Microfiction) is the Founding Editor of Best Microfiction, winner of a Bronze Independent Press Award (Bronze IPPY) in the Book Series Category in 2021. She is the author of seven prose collections and two novellas in flash, including most recently a micro collection, Spinning to Mars, winner of a Blue Light Book Award in 2020. Meg’s writing has been widely published and anthologized, including 2 Norton Anthologies of flash fiction, The Best Small Fictions, Best British & Irish Flash Fiction, Wigleaf Top 50, and many hundreds of literary journals and international anthologies of flash. Recent writing has appeared in Washington Square Review, Electric Literature, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, Five Points, American Journal of Poetry, Plume Poetry, Jellyfish Review, Wigleaf and Monkeybicycle. Meg serves as Co-Founder of San Francisco’s Flash Fiction Collective Reading Series, Flash Challenge Editor for Mslexia Magazine, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival, U.K, and Founding Editor of New Flash Fiction Review. She resides in Northern England.

Tracey Slaughter’s poetry and short fiction have been widely and received numerous awards. Her first collection of poems and short stories, Her body rises, was published by Random House (2005). Other books the short story collection, deleted scenes for lovers, (Victoria University Press, 2016; longlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), a poetry collection, Conventional Weapons (Victoria University Press), if there is no shelter (Ad Hoc 2020; second place in the 2020 Bath Novella-in-Flash award) and her most recent short story collection, Devil’s Trumpet (VUP, April 2021). Tracey’s accolades include the international Bridport Prize (2014) and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards (2004 and 2001). In 2015 she won the Landfall Essay Competition and was the recipient of the 2010 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. In 2020 she  won the international Fish Short Story Prize.Tracey teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ.

 

Abha Iyengar is an award winning, internationally published poet, author, editor and a 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.

Erik Kennedy is the author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (Victoria University Press, 2018), which was shortlisted for best book of poems at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and he is co-editing a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific forthcoming from Auckland University Press in late 2021. His second book of poems will be out in 2022. His poems, stories, and criticism have been published in places like FENCE, Hobart, Maudlin House, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS, and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, USA, he lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Agnes Marton is a Hungarian-born poet, writer, librettist, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK), reviews editor at The Ofi Press and art curator at One Hand Clapping. Recent publications include her collection Captain Fly’s Bucket List and four chapbooks with Moria Books (USA). She won the National Poetry Day Competition (UK), and an anthology she edited received the Saboteur Award. Her work is widely anthologized; some examples include Alice: Ekphrasis at the British Library and Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen. Her fiction was called “exceptional” at the prestigious Disquiet Literary Contest (USA). In the award-winning poetry exhibition project “Guardian of the Edge,” thirty-three accomplished visual artists responded to her poetry. She has been a resident poet at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, on a research boat in the Arctic Circle, and also in Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Serbia, Portugal, Chile, Canada and the United States. She is based in Luxembourg. She can be found online at facebook.com/agnesmartonpoet/.

Catherine McNamara / Vicenza, Italy grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in Ghana running a bar. Praised by Hilary Mantel, her short story collection The Cartography of Others was a People’s Book Prize (UK) finalist and winner of the Eyelands International Book Award (Greece). Pelt and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Award and a Hudson Prize semi-finalist. Love Stories for Hectic People is out in February 2021. Her most recent collection, Love Stories for Hectic People (2021) won the Saboteur Award in the short story category. Catherine is a writing coach and runs summer writing residencies in Italy where she lives. More here.

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) / Mangakino, Aotearoa New Zealand commutes between Hong Kong SAR, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand – when COVID allows! He is widely published across several genres in Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin and Romanian. His collection Atonement was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines in 2016. He also won the inaugural international Proverse Poetry Prize in 2016 and was represented in Best New Zealand Poems in the following year. He participatedin World Poetry Recital Night, Kuala Lumpur, September 2019, and Poetry International, the Southbank Centre, London in October 2019 – in the launch of Poems from the Edge of Extinction and in Incendiary Art: the power of disruptive poetry. Vaughan’s poem tahi kupu anake is included in the presentation by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas to United Nations Forum on Minority Issues in Geneva in November 2019. Rapatahana has a PhD from the University of Auckland on the work of English author Colin Wilson and frequently writes about and lectures on him. His New Zealand Book Council Writers File is here.

Tina Shaw writes strongly about ‘place’ in her books. She is an editor and author of more than 20 publications for children, young adults and general readership. She has edited a number of significant collections of New Zealand writing, and her stories have appeared in magazines and teenage anthologies, and have been broadcast on radio. Shaw has received many awards for her work, including the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency. Make a Hard Fist was published in 2018 by OneTree House and Ursa was published by Walker Books in 2019, after its manuscript was named winner of the 2018 Storylines Tessa Duder Award.Her latest novel, Ephemera, is set on the Waikato River, a location she knows well from growing up in the Waikato.

Michael Steven is the author of numerous chapbooks and the two acclaimed collections, Walking to Jutland Street (2018) and The Lifers (2020), both published by Otago University Press. He is a previous recipient of the Creative New Zealand Todd New Writers Bursary. Currently, he is interested in KNF no-till farming, and is learning to grow his own food and rongoā. He has just finished writing a new collection entitled ‘Night School’.

K.M. Elkes is based in the West Country, UK. His flash fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) was shortlisted for a 2020 Saboteur Award. He is a previous winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Fish Publishing Flash Prize,. His short stories have won, or been placed, in international writing competitions, such as the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature Prize and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. His writing has featured on schools and college curricula in the USA, India and Hong Kong and used by bibliotherapy charity The Reader. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University. From 2016-18 he was Guest Editor of the A3 Review literary magazine. As a writer from a rural, working class background, his work often reflects marginalised voices and places. This year, he is the judge for the 18^th Bath Flash Fiction Award.

Ru Freeman is an award-winning Sri Lankan and American writer and activist whose work appears internationally in English and in translation. She is the author of several books including the short-story collection, Sleeping Alone, and the novel On Sal Mal Lane, and editor of the anthologies, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine and Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security. She teaches creative writing worldwide, and directs the Artists Network at Narrative 4. photo credit Brenda Carpenter

Nod Ghosh is a graduate of the Hagley Writers’ Institute, in Ōtautahi Christchurch, and has published extensively overseas and in New Zealand. Nod was associate editor for Flash Frontier, an Adventure in Short Fiction in 2016, and placed second in the NZ National Flash Fiction Day that year. Truth Serum Press published the novella-in-flash The Crazed Wind in 2018, Filthy Sucre in 2020, and Toy Train is due for release in 2021. Nod has read for SmokeLong Quarterly and was guest editor for UK National Flash Fiction Day’s 2021 anthology. Further details: http://www.nodghosh.com/about/

UK-based journalist Mohamed Hassan was the 2015 NZ National Slam Champion, a NZ poetry slam representative and the winner of a New York Festival Radio Award for his podcast Public Enemy. His debut collection National Anthem is shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards. @mohamedwashere

Renee Liang is a consultant paediatrician and a widely published poet, short story writer and playwright. Her plays Lantern and The Bone Feeder have played to sold-out audiences. Her most recent book, When We Remember To Breathe, was written with Michele Powles. More at NZ Booklovers.

Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her novel about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce, was recently published to critical acclaim in the USA, Ireland, the UK, and Germany. Her chapbook of historical flash, Birdie, was published in 2020 by Arlen House. Nuala is editor at flash e-zine Splonk. www.nualaoconnor.com Twitter: @NualaNiC

Mere Taito is a Rotuman Islander poet, flash storywriter, and creative practice Indigenous scholar based in Kirikiriroa (Hamilton), New Zealand. She is the author of The Light and Dark in our Stuff, a chapbook of 10 poems exploring ‘light’ and ‘dark’ themes of humanity. Her work has also appeared in Bonsai, Landfall, Poetry NZ Yearbook 2021, Wild Honey, Poetry Shelf NZ, and Phantom Billstickers. She is currently exploring the role of ‘creativity’, via poetry and flash story, in Rotuman language activism here in Aotearoa. photo credit Maryam Mariya

Tina Barry ’s poems and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary publications such as Flash Frontier, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (Spotlighted story) and 2016, Drunken Boat, Connotation Press, The American Poetry Journal, Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse, and A Constellation of Kisses. Tina is the author of Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing, 2019) and Mall Flower: Poems and Short Fiction (Big Table Publishing, 2016).Tina holds an MFA in creative writing from Long Island University, Brooklyn. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has several Best of the Net nods. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn, Gemini Ink and Writers.com. Find her at TinaBarryWriter.com.

Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs her own creative writing school, Creative Writing Dunedin.  Her publications include two collections of poetry, Before The Divorce We Go To Disneyland and Learning to Lie Together; a novel, If The Tongue Fits, and verse novel, Eight Stages of Grace, a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers, a prose/poetic memoir, Here Comes Another Vital Moment and a poetic family memoir, Taking My Mother To The Opera. Her latest book is a long poetic narrative, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child, Otago University Press, 2020.  Diane will be talking about her newest work at the 2021 Fringe Festival and discussing the bending of boundaries in poetic narratives at the 2021 Dunedin Readers and Writers Festival. In 2013 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to writing and education. She lives in Dunedin with her husband, author Philip Temple.

Irishman James Claffey’s work appears in the W.W. Norton Anthologies, Flash Fiction International and New Micro: Exceptionally Small Fictions, and in Queen’s Ferry Press’s anthology, Best Small Fictions of 2015. He was a finalist in the Best Small Fictions of 2016, and a semi-finalist in 2017. He is the author of the short fiction collection, Blood a Cold Blue, from Press 53, and his novel, The Heart Crossways, is available from Thrice Publishing. He is on Twitter @534mu5 and Instagram as jamesclaffeywriter.

Tania Hershman‘s poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon’s 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and was published in Nov 2019, and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book ‘and what if we were all allowed to disappear’ was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020. Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story and flash fiction collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. www.taniahershman.com  photo credit Naomi Woddis

Tracey Slaughter’s poetry and short fiction have been widely and received numerous awards. Her first collection of poems and short stories, Her body rises, was published by Random House (2005). Other books the short story collection, deleted scenes for lovers, (Victoria University Press, 2016; longlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), a poetry collection, Conventional Weapons (Victoria University Press), if there is no shelter (Ad Hoc 2020; second place in the 2020 Bath Novella-in-Flash award) and her most recent short story collection, Devil’s Trumpet (VUP, April 2021). Tracey’s accolades include the international Bridport Prize (2014) and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards (2004 and 2001). In 2015 she won the Landfall Essay Competition and was the recipient of the 2010 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. In 2020 she  won the international Fish Short Story Prize.Tracey teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ. photo credit Catherine Chidgey

Robert Vaughan teaches workshops in hybrid writing, poetry, fiction at locations like The Clearing, Synergia Ranch, Mabel Dodge Luhan House. He leads roundtables in Milwaukee, WI. He was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction (2013, 2014). His flash fiction, ‘A Box’ was selected for Best Small Fictions 2016 and his flash, “Six Glimpses of the Uncouth” was chosen for Best Small Fictions 2019 (Queen’s Ferry Press).  His work has appeared in Hobart, Ghost Parachute, Big Other, Smokelong Quarterly and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief at Bending Genres, LLC. Vaughan is the author of five books: Microtones (Cervena Barva Press); Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits(Deadly Chaps); Addicts & Basements (CCM), RIFT, co-authored with Kathy Fish (Unknown Press) and FUNHOUSE(Unknown Press). His blog: www.robert-vaughan.com.

Linda Wastila‘sPushcart- and Best-of-the-Net- nominated prose and poems have been published in The Sun, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, Scissors and Spackle, MiCrow, Blue Five Notebook, The Poet’s Market 2013, Hoot, Camroc Press Review, Every Day Fiction and Nanoism, among others. In 2015, she received her MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. When she’s not writing, working or sleeping, she serves as Senior Fiction Editor at JMWW, a Baltimore-based literary journal.

Nathan Leslie (Editor, Best Small Fictions) won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his satirical collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. Nathan’s nine previous books of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is currently the series editor for Best Small Fictions, the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.

Meg Pokrass (Editor, Best Microfiction) is the Founding Editor of Best Microfiction, winner of a Bronze Independent Press Award (Bronze IPPY) in the Book Series Category in 2021. She is the author of seven prose collections and two novellas in flash, including most recently a micro collection, Spinning to Mars, winner of a Blue Light Book Award in 2020. Meg’s writing has been widely published and anthologized, including 2 Norton Anthologies of flash fiction, The Best Small Fictions, Best British & Irish Flash Fiction, Wigleaf Top 50, and many hundreds of literary journals and international anthologies of flash. Recent writing has appeared in Washington Square Review, Electric Literature, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, Five Points, American Journal of Poetry, Plume Poetry, Jellyfish Review, Wigleaf and Monkeybicycle. Meg serves as Co-Founder of San Francisco’s Flash Fiction Collective Reading Series, Flash Challenge Editor for Mslexia Magazine, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival, U.K, and Founding Editor of New Flash Fiction Review. She resides in Northern England.

Gary Fincke‘s (Editor, Best Microfiction) books have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, The Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Nonfiction Prose, and the Wheeler Prize for Poetry. His latest collections are The Sorrows: Stories (Stephen F. Austin, 2020) and The Infinity Room: Poems (Michigan State, 2019). His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in such periodicals as Harper’s, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Missouri Review as well as in Best American Essays 2020 and Best Small Fictions 2020.

Sudha Balagopal’s short fiction is published in Smokelong Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine and Pidgeonholes among other journals. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Pushcart Prize and is listed in the Wigleaf top 50.

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a Blackhawk, Ms native. She has been published with Electric Literature, Hobart Pulp, Booth, Fractured Lit, Jellyfish Review, and more. She is currently working on her novel. Exodus loves the color green.

Jerry Chiemeke is an editor, culture critic, author and lawyer. His works have appeared in publications like The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Republic, Inlandia Journal, The Guardian and Agbowo, among others. He frequently writes columns on music and film for The Lagos Review, and on his medium page. Jerry is the winner of the 2017 Ken Saro Wiwa Prize for Criticism, and a recipient of the 2019 Connect Nigeria Award for Excellence. He currently volunteers as a mentor for the Springg Writers Fellowship. He is the author of the short story collection Dreaming Of Ways To Understand You, and the poetry chapbook Notes for Nnedimma.

Vanessa Chan is a Malaysian writer preoccupied with identity, colonization and women who don’t toe the line. She has writing published or forthcoming in Conjunctions, Electric Lit, Ecotone, BOMB Magazine and more. She’s a fiction editor at TriQuarterly, and her work has been supported by Sewanee, Tin House, and Disquiet International. She is at work on a novel and a story collection.

Noa Covo‘s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Jellyfish Review, Waxwing, Best Small Fictions 2021, Best Microfiction 2021, Passages North and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.

Jeff Friedman’s eight book ,The Marksman, was published in November 2020 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has received numerous awards and prizes for his poetry, mini tales, and translations, including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.

Caroljean Gavin‘s work has appeared in places such as Pithead Chapel, Milk Candy Review and Barrelhouse. She is the editor of What I Thought of Ain’t Funny (Malarkey Books), an anthology of short fiction based on the jokes of Mitch Hedberg. Her flash chapbook Shards of a Stained Glass Moving Picture Fairy Tale is forthcoming from Selcouth Station.

Jules Hogan is a writer and editor from the blue ridge mountains and a fiction MFA student at ASU. Stories can be found in Everything Change Vol. iii, Pithead Chapel, the Yalobusha Review and elsewhere. Jules is the 2021 fiction meets science fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftkolleg in Germany. Follow them on Twitter @seektheyonder

Di Jayawickrema is a hybrid writer living in New York City. Her work has appeared in wildness, Jellyfish Review, Pithead Chapel, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a VONA alumnus and an incoming Kundiman fellow. She is working on her first book. Visit her at dijayawickrema.com.

Hillary Leftwich is the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (CCM Press/The Accomplices 2019). Her hybrid memoir, Aura–a series of survivor stories told to her epileptic son–is forthcoming from Future Tense Books in 2022. She is the founder and owner of Alchemy Author Services & Workshop and teaches creative writing at Lighthouse Writers. She focuses her writing on class struggle, single motherhood, trauma, mental illness, the supernatural, ritual, and the impact of neurological disease. She teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities as well as writing. She lives in Denver with her partner, son, and cat, Larry.

Melissa Ostrom is the author of The Beloved Wild and Unleaving. Her stories have appeared in many journals and been selected for Best Small Fictions 2019 and Best Microfiction 2020. She teaches English at Genesee Community College in western New York. Learn more at http://www.melissaostrom.com or find her on Twitter @melostrom.

Kaj Tanaka‘s fiction has appeared in New South, New Ohio Review, Hobart and Tin House. Kaj lives in Shiprock, New Mexico.

Hananah Zaheer’s recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Waxwing, AGNI, Smokelong, Pithead Chapel, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Alaska Quarterly Review and elsewhere. A flash chapbook, Lovebirds, is forthcoming from Bull City Press. She is currently working on a novel. You can find her @hananahzaheer

Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. She reads for Barren Magazine, Heavy Feather Review and Pithead Chapel. Find her at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.