Christopher Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). His work has appeared in Flash Fiction America (Norton), The Best Small Fictions, and over 100 literary journals and anthologies. He has judged The Bath Flash Fiction Award, New Zealand’s Micro Madness, the Cambridge Flash Fiction Award, and the flash fiction portion of The Bridport Prize. Allen, a nomad, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of SmokeLong Quarterly.

Robert Barrett lives and works in west Wicklow, Ireland, where he writes short fiction and plays. He has won the RTE PJ O’Connor Award for radio drama on two occasions in 2017 and 2020. His short fiction has been published in the Incubator, the Irish Times, the Fish Anthology, in Flashback Fiction, in New Flash Fiction Review and on RTE Radio one, amongst other places. He is a co-editor of Splonk (www.splonk.ie) Ireland’s bi-lingual flash ficiton journal.

Lola Elvy is the founding editor of the youth journal, fingers comma toes, and the coordinator of the youth National Flash Fiction Day. She writes music, poetry, and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. She has taught workshops for literary festivals in Aotearoa New Zealand and tutors online youth courses in poetry, creative writing and essay writing. Her work has been featured at events and in online and print anthologies, including Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (2018), A Cluster of Lights (2023), and He Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages (forthcoming 2024).

Ingrid Jendrzejewski studied creative writing and English Literature at the University of Evansville, then Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She currently serves as Co-Director of the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day, Editor-in-Chief of FlashFlood, and a consultant for The Prose Poem. She has published around 200 shortform pieces and has won multiple flash fiction competitions, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write and ended up co-running a bar in Ghana, working in Mogadishu and Milan along the way. She is the author of the short fiction collections The Carnal Fugues, The Cartography of Others, Love Stories for Hectic People and Pelt and Other Stories, and her stories have been widely published. She is Flash Fiction Editor and a Masterclass tutor for Litro Magazine, and was Guest Editor for the Best Small Fictions anthology 2023. Catherine lives in Italy.

Tracey Slaughter is the author of books of poetry and short stories, most recently, The Girls in the Red House Are Singing (poems, 2024), Deleted Scenes for Lovers (stories, 2016), Devil’s Trumpet (stories, 2021), If There Is No Shelter  (novella, 2020) and Conventional Weapons (poems, 2019). She has received numerous awards, including the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize, 2023 Manchester Poetry Prize, the 2020 Fish Short Story Prize, the 2015 Landfall Essay Competition, the 2014 Bridport Prize and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ.

Rachel Smith lives and writes in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has been published in journals and anthologies including Landfall, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. She is screenwriter for the feature film, Stranded Pearl, due for release in 2024, and is an editor at Flash Frontier. @rsmithwriternz http://rachelmsmithnz.wix.com/rachel-smith

Jack Flanagan is a year 13 student from St. Andrew’s College in Christchurch, NZ, who has a love for writing and expressing his feelings through words.

Hannah Jay is a twelve-year-old student from Dunedin, New Zealand. Writing has always been her passion, and she enjoys reading, netball and debating. She hopes to continue her writing, and for great things in the future.

Ashley Malkin is a seventeen-year-old writer and scientist from Connecticut. She studied creative writing at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and her fiction and poetry have been recognised by the Scholastic Writing Awards, the Society of Classical Poets, Gannon University and many other organizations. Her work has been published in several literary magazines, and her science writing has been honoured by the NIH and Harvard International Review. She is a Research Science Institute Scholar, and her science research has won Grand Awards at the Regeneron International Science & Engineering Fair in Translational Medicine.

Alin Sengjaroen (she/he) is a teen writer, poet, and screenwriter from Thailand. She has been published in Babbles Magazines, Strawberry Zine, and more. When he is not writing, she’s usually reading.

Bianca Zou is a young writer who has been experimenting with free-verse poetry and short stories since the 6th grade, when she helped illustrate a research book on marine science for the New York Marine Rescue Centre. She has been honoured in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and published in American High School Poets, American Library of Poetry and the Diamond Gazette. Bianca also holds leadership positions for Foreign Language Honour Society, Student Government and Tri-M Honour Society. She is involved in Athletes Helping Athletes and has participated in Science Olympiad for three years, scoring top 15 in all three of her events in 2024.

Thomas Charles Cairncross, contributing editor at fingers comma toes, is a budding student teacher at Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou (the University of Otago). Thomas is a lover of stories, poetry, riddles and prose, and currently on the road to becoming a secondary school teacher, with a focus on English, Social Sciences and Classics. When not teaching or studying, Thomas will likely be found either stuck behind a computer screen, following rabbit holes into educational mysteries, or enjoying a bit of air, climbing at the local crag(s). With a fondness for science, gothic and speculative fiction, Thomas is on the lookout for surprises (that may be used in the classroom).

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Before coming to Aotearoa, Michelle was an historian, a Fulbright scholar and a Watson Fellow. Her work examines the fluidity of memory and imagination, and our intersections in the natural world, from her novel the everrumble to the anthology she co-edited last year with Witi Ihimaera, A Kind of Shelter: Whakaruru-taha, to the forthcoming visual art-poetry collaboration for the Art + Science Exhibition in Ōtepoti. Michelle is the founding editor of National Flash Fiction Day NZ and Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.

Dr Renee Liang 梁文蔚 MNZM is a poet, paediatrician, playwright and essayist.  After exploring open mics in Broken Hill Australia Renee joined the MC team at Poetry Live, becoming known for running slams. Since then Renee has become a jack of literary trades: she wrote, produced and nationally toured eight plays; makes operas, musicals and community arts programmes; her poems, essays and short stories are anthologised. The Bone Feeder, a play adapted into opera (AAF 2017), was one of the first Asian mainstage works in NZ and one of the opening works at the Waterfront Theatre in Auckland.

Siobhan Harvey is the author of eight books. Her work has won the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award (2013, been included three times in Best New Zealand Poems, and published in anthologies and journals like Asia Literary Award (HK), and Bonsai: Best small fiction from Aotearoa New Zealand (CUP, 2018). Recently, she won the Landfall Essay Prize, and was runner up in the Bridport Memoir Award (UK).

Bill Nelson is the author of Root Leaf Flower Fruit and Memorandum of Understanding (both published by Te Herenga Waka University Press). He lives in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington with his partner, two children and his dog, Callimachus Bruce.

Mikaela Nyman, moderator: Mikaela Nyman is an award-winning poet, fiction and non-fiction writer who writes in English and Swedish. Born in the autonomous, demilitarised Åland Islands in Finland, she now lives in Taranaki. Collaboration across borders of language, ethnicity, geography and time excites her. She was awarded a major literature prize by the Swedish Literature Society of Finland in 2024 for her second poetry collection För att ta sig ur en rivström måste man röra sig i sidled (2023), and was also nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2024. She is the 2024 Robert Burns Fellow in Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Claire Beynon is a writer and artist based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. She has a special interest in text as image and image as text. Claire’s poetry, flash and short stories have been widely anthologized in NZ and abroad, most recently Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Langauges (2024), A Liminal Gathering (2023), Poetry New Zealand Yearbook (2022), Cumulus: An Anthology of Clouds (2023) and Poetry for the Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures (2021). Claire’s artwork Fifty-two became the cover image for Ko Aotearoa Tatou/We Are New Zealand. Her first poetry collection, Open Book – Poetry & Images, was published by Steele Roberts Ltd in 2009. A memoir in verse, For When Words Fail Us | A small Book of Changes is due out in September 2024 (The Cuba Press). Two research seasons in Antarctica led to a rich chapter of ArtScience collaboration with US scientists, an experience that continues to inform her work.

Alex Reece Abbott’s writing is a Penguin Random House WriteNow finalist and Irish Novel Fair, Northern Crime, Arvon, Crediton, Pulp Literature and HG Wells and Flash Frontier Summer Writing Award prize winner. Her stories appear in anthologies, including Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand, A Cluster of Lights and Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages (forthcoming)– and in magazines, including The Word Factory, Tishman Review, The Short Story, Flash Frontier, Fictive Dream, Blink-Ink, Hypertext, Splonk and Heron.

Originally from Franklin, Janean Cherkun is finding her way to writing memoir or creative non-fiction with a twist, so long as it doesn’t ramble (so far it does) and is thrilled to have discovered flash, both for social and intellectual reasons. She publishes semi-regularly in Flash Frontier, had a story appear in Best Microfictions 2022 and later this year will have a translingual piece included in Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages. Longlisted for Micro Madness in 2022 and 2023, Janean has been shortlisted for NFFD 2024.

A graduate of the Hagley Writers’ Institute, Ōtautahi, Christchurch, Nod Ghosh has had work published in NZ and overseas. Nod was associate editor of Flash Frontier, an Adventure in Short Fiction 2016-7. Nod’s books include The Crazed Wind (2018), Filthy Sucre (2020), Toy Train (2021), Love, Lemons and Illicit Sex (2023), Throw a Seven (2023) and The Two-Tailed Snake (2023). How to Bake a Book is forthcoming from Everytime Press in 2024. Further information is available on Nod’s website: www.nodghosh.com

Erik Kennedy is the author of Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022) and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), both with Te Herenga Waka University Press, and coeditor of No Other Place to Stand, a book of climate poetry from New Zealand and the Pacific (Auckland University Press, 2022). He lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Jordan Hamel is an Aotearoa writer, performer and Fulbright Scholar. He holds an MFA University of Michigan. His debut poetry collection Everyone is Everyone Except You, was published by Dead Bird Books in 2022 and will be published by Broken Sleep in the UK in July. He is the co-editor of No Other Place to Stand (AUP, 2022). He is the winner of the 2023 Sonora Review Poetry Competition, and the 2023 New Writers UK Poetry Prize. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY, Electric Literature, Pleiades, American Literary Review and elsewhere.

Kerry Lane is a poet and playwright from Aotearoa with past lives in science and teaching. They currently live in Scotland where they work in theatre and refugee justice.

Clare MacQueen is founding editor of two arts and literary journals, MacQueen’s Quinterly (launched 01-2020) and KYSO Flash (2014-2019). She edited, designed, and produced 20 print books, including six annual anthologies, via KYSO Flash Press (retired 2020). Via MacQ, she produced two collaborative print collections (2023 & 2024) and is working on a third. She collaborated with Lorette C. Luzajic on The Memory Palace (Ekphrastic Editions, 2024). Clare also co-edited Steve Kowit: This Unspeakably Marvelous Life (Serving House Books, 2015).

Janis Freegard is the author of a novel, The Year of Falling (Mākaro Press, 2015), and several poetry collections, most recently Reading the Signs (The Cuba Press, 2020). Her fiction and poetry are widely published in Aotearoa and internationally. She’s won several awards for her writing, including the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. Born in South Shields, England, she grew up in the UK, South Africa, Australia and Aotearoa, and has lived in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) most of her life. She has degrees in plant ecology and public management, lives with historian Peter Clayworth and works in the public service. Her website is at janisfreegard.com

Jenna Heller is an American-Kiwi writer originally from Connecticut with a serious soft-spot for New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Prince Edward Island, Canada. She was joint-winner of the Meniscus Australian CLA Best Prose Prize 2019, shortlisted for the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing 2019, runner-up of the North & South Short, Short Story Contest 2019, winner of National Flash Fiction Day NZ 2020, runner-up for the Caselberg International Poetry Prize 2021, and included in the Best Small Fictions 2020, 2021, and 2023. Her book, The End of the Beginning, is her first collection.

Madeleine Slavick is the author of several books of photography, poetry and non-fiction: My Body My Business – New Zealand sex workers in an era of change (as photographer), Fifty Stories Fifty Images (Hong Kong); Something Beautiful Might Happen (Japan); My Favourite Thing (two editions, in Beijing and Taiwan); delicate access (Hong Kong); Round – Poems and Photographs of Asia (Hong Kong). Her latest title is Town (The Cuba Press, 2024). She has initiated and coordinated many community arts programmes – in Hong Kong and Aotearoa New Zealand. She lives in Wairarapa.

Penelope Todd is already an award-winning author of fiction, including the YA Watermark trilogy, Peri, Box and others, Island, Amigas (co-written in English and Spanish) and much-loved memoir Digging For Spain: a Writer’s Journey. She has gained residencies at the Iowa International Writing Programme, Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, Can Serrat in Spain, Argentina and the Dunedin College of Education. She was a publisher at Rosa Mira Books, and works as a freelance editor and literary assessor. In her new novel Nell, Penelope brings her grandmother to radiant and vivid life.

Gail Ingram writes from the Port Hills of Ōtautahi Christchurch, and is author of three collections of poetry. Her latest collection, anthology (n.) a collection of flowers (Pūkeko Publications 2024), is part poetry, part field-guide. Her other collections are Some Bird (2023) and Contents Under Pressure (2019). Awards include winning the Caselberg (2019) and New Zealand Poetry Society (2016) international poetry prizes. She is managing editor of NZ Poetry Society’s flagship magazine a fine line teaches at Write On School for Young Writers.

About the readers

Sudha Balagopal‘s fiction straddles continents and cultures. Her flash fiction can be found in CRAFT, Smokelong and swamp pink among other journals. Nose Ornaments, her novella in flash, will be released from Ad Hoc Fiction soon. Her work has been published in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50. More at www.sudhabalagopal.com

Lucie Bonvalet is a writer, a visual artist and a teacher. Her writing (prose & poetry) can be found in Best Small Fictions 2023, SAND, Lost Balloon, Monkeybicycle, Phantom Drift Limited, Juked, Jellyfish Review, Catapult and elsewhere. Originally from the Dordogne in France, she has lived in Portland, Oregon since 2004.

Jessica Denzer received her M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work can be found in various literary journals and publications, including Alternating Current’s anthology Best Small Fictions of 2023 (2024), and Archway Editions’ Unpublishable Anthology (2020). Jessica is also the Editor of L’Esprit Literary Review, and Prose Editor of Iron Oak Editions. She teaches writing and literature at Fordham University in New York. Her current work-in-progress focuses on grief, sexuality, ghosts, and witchcraft.

Insha Hamdani believes in the power of narrative to connect, understand and heal. Her stories share the blurry space between fiction and nonfiction and navigate the nuances of human experience. With a background in communications and strategic management, Insha supports efforts for the inalienable right to health in resource-limited, change resistant environments. Insha lives in Maryland.

Lorette C. Luzajic reads, writes, edits, publishes, and teaches flash fiction.  She is also an award-winning visual artist with collectors in forty countries so far. Both of her practices are fueled by eclectic curiosity. A few of her passion pursuits include art history, armchair archeology, TV with charismatic detectives, and wines around the world.  She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry. Lorette lives in Toronto, Canada.

Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections.  Her stories  appear in numerous journals and anthologies.  She has received four Pushcart Prizes, most recently for her story “Just This” in Alaska Quarterly Review.  Her stories have been staged by Word Theatre in LA, London and New York, and her story “Doors” will soon be a short film.  

David James Poissant is the author of the novel Lake Life, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and The Heaven of Animals: Stories, a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida, where he serves as Editor of The Florida Review.

Emmanuel Nwafor writes fiction and poetry from Enugu, a city in Nigeria. His fiction has appeared in The Story Tree Challenge Maiden Anthology and Apple Valley Review. His poetry was shortlisted for the Bloomsday poetry prize in 2020.

Eric Scot Tryon is a writer and editor from San Francisco. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Mid-American Review, Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, Willow Springs, Los Angeles Review, The Florida Review, and has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, and the Best Small Fictions & Best Microfiction anthologies. Eric is represented by Carleen Geisler at ArtHouse Literary Agency. He is also the Founding Editor of Flash Frog. Find more information at www.ericscottryon.com.

A biracial Asian artist and writer, Addie Tsai (any/all) is Assistant Teaching Professor at William & Mary. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie is the author of Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures, which was a Shirley Jackson finalist for Best Novel. She is the features & reviews editor, as well as fiction co-editor, for Anomaly, and the founding editor in chief for just femme & dandy.