Erik Kennedy is the author of three books of poems – There’s No Place Like the Internet In Springtime (2018), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and Sick Power Trip (2025) – and he co-edited No Other Place to Stand, an anthology of climate change poetry from Aotearoa and the Pacific. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021), and her extensive editing work includes this year’s multilingual anthologies Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories and Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages. She is Managing Editor of the Best Small Fictions series, and founder of NFFD NZ and Flash Frontier. She teaches creative writing at 52|250 A Year of Writing.

Linda Collins is the author of a memoir, Loss Adjustment, published in Aotearoa, Singapore and China. She was a 2023 NFFD short-lister, and has an MA in Poetry from the University of East Anglia in the UK, where she shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Her microfiction appears in the new dual-language anthology Poto! Short!, edited by Michelle Elvy and Kiri Piahana-Wong and released June 2025 by Massey University Press.

Nina Schuyler’s story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her novel, Afterword, won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won Best Microfiction 2025.

Rachel Smith writes prose and poetry in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Landfall, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. She was fiction editor for takahē in 2017-18 and contributing editor for Best Microfiction 2021, and her book reviews have appeared in takahē and Landfall Review Online. Rachel was the screenwriter for the feature film Stranded Pearl (2024) and is an editor at Flash Frontier.

Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu, and Irish) wrote Hopurangi—Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka (Auckland University Press), which was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. He is the author of nine books of poetry, a graphic novel and an award-winning book of Māori legends for children. He has co-edited several anthologies of Polynesian and Māori poetry, all published by Auckland University Press. He received the 2022 Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. He is associate professor of creative writing at Massey University.

Susan Wardell is a writer, poet, and academic, from Ōtepoti Dunedin, where she lives in a woodland garden overlooking the harbour, with her two children. Susan trained in social anthropology, and communication studies. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago. Among her awards are: Winner, Storylines Notable Book Awards (Picture Books) 2022 for The Lighthouse Princess, Penguin Random House NZ, and NFFD 1^st place, 2022.

Joani Reese is from North Texas, USA and author of poetry chapbooks: Final Notes and Dead Letters. Night Chorus is Reese’s full-length collection. Reese was poetry editor for THIS Magazine and Connotation Press-An Online Artifact, and fiction guest editor for Scissors and Spackle. Reese won the 1^st Patricia McFarland Memorial Prize for flash fiction, The Graduate School Creative Writing Award from The University of Memphis, and the Glass Woman Prize for her flash fiction. She also curates the yearly AWP offsite underground reading series Hot Pillow, now in its 13^th year.

Mary-Jane Holmes has garnered many awards including winning the Bridport Poetry prize, the Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash prize She has been shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize for Literature and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize twice. Her NIF Don’t Tell the Bees is published by AdHoc Fiction, her collection of flash fiction is published by V. Press. She is a member of the European Association for Creative Writing Programmes and Chief Editor at Fish Publishing International.

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.

Sara Hills is the author of the award-winning flash collection The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021). Her work has been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Fractured Lit, Cease Cows, Flash Frog, Fictive Dream and elsewhere. Find her online at sarahillswrites.com.

A queer writer of odd things, Tania Hershman is the author of three flash fiction and short story collections, and editor of Fuel: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Flash Fictions Raising Funds to Fight Fuel Poverty (https://www.fuelflash.net/). Her debut creative nonfiction book, ‘It’s Time: A Chronomemoir’, will be published in July 2025. Tania is also the author of four books of poetry and two hybrid books, and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. www.taniahershman.com

Tracey Slaughter‘s latest books are The Girls in the Red House are Singing (Te Herenga Waka Press, 2024) and Devil’s Trumpet (Te Herenga Waka Press, 2021). Her prose and poetry have won numerous awards, most recently the Manchester Poetry Prize 2023, The Moth Short Story Award 2024, and the ABR Calibre Essay Prize 2024. She teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato and is the editor of Poetry Aotearoa.

Anton Blank (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) is of Māori and Swiss heritage. He has an extensive history in social work, communications, Māori development, public health, literature and fine arts. Anton has held senior roles in the government and not for profit sectors, including Communications Services Manager at the Ministry of Education and Executive Director of the Māori child advocacy organization Mana Ririki. He is an international expert in unconscious bias and racism, and now works across justice, health, education, literature, and the arts, developing strategies to mitigate unconscious bias and its impact on Māori and other marginalized groups. Anton is the editor and founder of the Māori literary journal Ora Nui.

Afua Awo Twumwa is a Ghanaian writer of Krobo and Akyem descent. She is the second prize winner of the 2022 Samira Bawumia Literature Prize in poetry. Her works have appeared in AFREADA, Agbowó, Kalahari Review, Journal of the Writers Project of Ghana, Tampered Press, CGWS and on her website and elsewhere.

Eraldo Souza dos Santos is an Assistant Professor within the Poetic Justice Cluster at the University of California, Irvine. They are currently writing a family memoir exploring how their mother, then a seven-year-old child, was sold into slavery during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the late 1960s.

Faithna Geffrard is a Haitian American writer from South Florida. She uses words to examine the horrifying and humorous. She is an alumna of Roots.Wounds.Words, the Wild Seeds Retreat, VONA, and Tin House. Her writing has been featured in Panorama Journal, The Missing Slate, Little Old Lady, Raising Mother’s, and more. Her short story “No Ponyboy” was nominated by Susurrus Magazine to be a part of the 2025 Best Small Fictions.

Kate Horsley’s first novel was shortlisted for the Saltire Award. Her second was published by William Morrow. Both have been optioned for film. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines like The Cincinnati Review, The Citron Review, Fictive Dream, BULL, Paragraph Planet, Storyglossia, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, Fish Barrel Review, Cake and Strix, and placed in competitions including Bath, Bournemouth, Bridport, Oxford and SmokeLong. She has a PhD from Harvard and is a creative writing lecturer.

Síle Mannion is a proud Irish woman/Bean na hEireann, and citizen/tauiwi, of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Published variously and widely, on this side of the world and the other, she reads everything and writes anything; poems and bits and pieces of small fictions, short stories, songs, essays and the odd odd review.

Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Viktoriia Vozharenko moved to Lancaster, PA in 2018. Viktoriia writes fiction and non-fiction based on her experiences as an immigrant who also lived through war and violence. She publishes her works on https://medium.com/@viktoriavozharenko.

Cadence Chung is a poet, mezzo-soprano and composer, currently studying at the New Zealand School of Music. She has released three books: anomalia (Tender Press, 2022), Mythos: an Audio-Visual Anthology of Art by Young New Zealanders, (ed.) (Wai-te-Ata Press, 2024), and Mad Diva (Otago University Press, 2025). She also performs as a classical soloist, presents on RNZ Concert, and edits Symposia Magazine and the New Zealand Poetry Society’s quarterly magazine, a fine line.

Damian Dressick is the author of the novel 40 Patchtown and the award-winning flash collection Fables of the Deconstruction. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro, Electric Literature, Post Road, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf. Damian serves as Editor-in-Chief for the journal Appalachian Lit.

Lynn Jenner is a writer and teacher from Northland. Lynn’s first book Dear Sweet Harry (AUP) won the Adam Prize for Creative Writing and the NZSA Jessie McKay Best First Book of Poetry Prize. She has since published Lost and Gone Away (AUP) and Peat (OUP). Lynn also publishes essays and poems. She is especially interested in genre fluid writing.

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021), and her extensive editing work includes this year’s multilingual anthologies Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories and Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages. She is Managing Editor of the Best Small Fictions series, and founder of NFFD NZ and Flash Frontier. She teaches creative writing at 52|250 A Year of Writing.

P S Duffy lives in Rochester, Minnesota, and writes fiction, poetry, spiritual reflections, and creative nonfiction. Her nonacademic books include A Stockbridge Homecoming (Bright Sky Press, 2001), a memoir of her family’s time in 1940s China; and The Cartographer of No Man’s Land (Liveright, New York, 2013), a World War I novel set in Nova Scotia and the battlefields of France. Published in the U.S., Canada, Israel, Taiwan and the UK, it was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which recognizes the power of fiction to promote peace.

Robert Shapard co-created and edited with James Thomas many volumes of W. W. Norton’s flash and sudden fiction anthologies. His own stories have appeared in journals such as New World Writing Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Juked, 100-Word Story, New Flash Fiction Review, Necessary Fiction, Typishly, Bending Genres, Fractured Lit, and New England Review and are collected in a new book, Bare Ana and Other Stories. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he helped establish America’s first flash fiction archive at the Harry Ransom Center. Join him on Facebook  at facebook.com/robert.shapard or at robertshapard.com.

Tina Barry is the author of I Tell Henrietta (Aim Higher, Inc., 2024), Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing). Her short fiction and poetry can be found in The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, Flash-Frontier, SoFloPoJo, the Maryland Literary Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Rattle, Verse Daily, SWWIM, The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. Tina has five Pushcart Prize nominations and several Best of the Net and Best Microfiction nods. She teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

Ayotola Tehingbola (she/her, b. ’93, Lagos) is a lawyer, photographer, writer, and translator. Her writing has appeared in The Common, CRAFT, Witness Magazine, etc. She was a finalist for the 2023 Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize for Debut Novel and the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Benn Jeffries is a New Zealand writer. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Zealand Listener, Solar Journal and others. He has an MFA from Columbia University in New York. In 2024 he won the Frank Sargeson Prize. He lives by the sea in Wellington with his family.

Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared in several journals such as The Pinch, SmokeLong Quarterly, Time & Space Magazine, and included in Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2023, Best Microfiction 2024,2025, and Best Small Fictions 2024, 2025 anthologies. She is a recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Her stories can be found at www.christinehchen.com

Linda Collins is the author of a memoir, Loss Adjustment, published in Aotearoa, Singapore and China. She was a 2023 NFFD short-lister, and has an MA in Poetry from the University of East Anglia in the UK, where she shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Her microfiction appears in the new dual-language anthology Poto! Short!, edited by Michelle Elvy and Kiri Piahana-Wong and released June 2025 by Massey University Press.

Mandira Pattnaik is an Indian writer published most recently in The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Iron Horse Literary Review, Emerson Review, The McNeese Review, SAND Journal, Best Microfiction Anthology (2024) and Best Small Fictions Anthology (2021 & 2024), among others. Longlisted in Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2025, she writes across categories and genres. Mandira is the author of collections/novellas Glass/Fire (2024), Girls Who Don’t Cry (2023) and Where We Set Our Easel (2023). Visit mandirapattnaik.com

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work forthcoming in Cutleaf Journal, and Prairie Schooner. Read Hard Skin (2022), Kahi and Lua (2022) and Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.

Moisés Delgado is a Latino writer from Nebraska. He holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and is a prose editor for The Adroit Journal. His words appear in Fugue, SmokeLong Quarterly, CRAFT, Split Lip and elsewhere.

Vana Manasiádis | Βάνα Μανασιάδη is a poet, editor and translator, and the author of four books including Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima and The Grief Almanac: A Sequel.  She has been a Michael King and Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence and is now Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha Canterbury University. From July she will be in Crete to work on her next book, another experiment in hybridity and autofiction, and to welcome the Greek translation of The Grief Almanac in a very small bookshop. Vana is one of the judges for the 2025 NFFD competition in Aotearoa NZ, and her work appears most recently in the dual-language anthology with stories in English and te reo Māori, Poto! Short!

About the readers

Hudson Blyde is a 13-year-old Year 9 student from St Andrews College, Christchurch. He won a gold medal in the 2023 ICAS Writing Competition, as well as becoming a finalist in St Andrew’s Festival of the Spoken Word this year. Beyond writing and public speaking, his passions include reading, swimming and playing tennis, among other things.

Jessica Hurrell is a 15-year-old homeschooler from Christchurch, New Zealand. She loves writing and has been recognized for her writing multiple times. She loves every class she attends at Write On School for Young Writers.

Joanne Ng is a 14-year-old student from Villa Maria College in Christchurch who loves reading all types of books. Her favourite genres are mystery and adventure, for their ability to teleport the reader into a totally different world. In her free time, Joanne puts her imagination to paper while writing short stories, and she believes that one of the best parts of a story is the plot twist.

Kangwoo Moon was born in South Korea in 2011. He is currently dwelling in Christchurch as an international student. Striving to discover hidden allegories and inspiration within the paths of mundane life, Kangwoo ultimately aspires to become a visionary filmmaker. Knowing the responsibilities of being a storyteller, he places himself in roles with responsibilities in action, while remaining dedicated to his academic progress as well.

Samuel Hu is currently a fourteen-year-old St Andrew’s College student in Christchurch, New Zealand. He enjoys reading and writing dystopian short stories. Debating and singing are some of his other creative passions when he isn’t playing water polo or juggling around maths equations.

Tom Ambury is a Year 10 student at St Andrew’s College in Christchurch. He is a member of the school’s Writing Club and enjoys its supportive and encouraging nature. Outside of school, Tom enjoys spending time on his lifestyle block in North Loburn and exploring Aotearoa’s many tramping tracks.

Hannah Scovell-Lightfoot, moderator. Hannah Scovell-Lightfoot is an Auckland-based artist, currently pursuing a degree in Health Sciences: Counselling at the Auckland University of Technology. Hannah’s training includes yin yoga and myofascial release massage, and she likes to explore the connection between mind and body, both in healthcare and creative practice. With an interest in visual and performance art, Hannah has been the arts editor at fingers comma toes since 2023.

About the readers

Cicy Chen is a fifteen-year-old student from St Andrew’s College in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is often impossible to find, as she is everywhere yet nowhere at once. However, if you tried really hard, you could probably find her sprinting to her next class or crying over a book.

Cooper Harris is a 17-year-old writer from Ōtautahi, New Zealand. He has been writing since he was 8 years old attending The School for Young Writers for his whole life. He has always loved writing and has been published in various magazines such as Write On and appearing in New Foundations. He has been featured as guest readers for events such as Lambing Season and now New Zealand National Flash Fiction Day.

Lucy Kennedy is a 17-year-old Auckland student who adores reading, writing, and all things creative. She has been previously published in Toi Toi and Fabo Story in 2019, the NFFD Youth Competition and Beyond Belief in 2020, and has been writing as a film review columnist for Verve magazine since 2022. You can find her outside wrapped in a wool rug on a rainy day.

Samuela Noel Dsouza is a teenage author from Auckland, and a member of NZSA. She was born in India and migrated to New Zealand when she was 11 years old. She has poetry published in Awa Wahine‘s korero and upcoming in WriteOn magazine, came third in the 2024 Aotearoa Student Yearbook Poetry Competition. She was longlisted in 2024’s NFFD Youth Competition, and was one of two Highly Commended for the NZSA Youth Mentorship Programme. Writing, for her, is the language of everything unspoken.

Sarah Tan I-Xin, also known as STIX, is the middle child of three sisters. Born in Singapore but raised in Malaysia and New Zealand, she speaks for all teenagers who struggle to fit in. Her favourite writing spot? A quiet lookout in the bush, with a view of the Wellington harbour. Besides writing, she loves volleyball, piano, composing music and sunsets.

Lola Elvy, moderator. Originally from overseas, Lola Elvy is a writer, musician, and song-writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her work intertwines themes of science, language, and the natural climate. As a teacher, Lola believes in helping students harness their own creative expression and initiative. She teaches music theory and vocal performance, creative writing, and essay writing, working privately and in local schools. Lola is a 2025 Kupe Leadership Scholar at the University of Auckland, where she is focusing on music composition.

Amanda Hurley is a New Zealander who lives in Germany. She writes short fiction and poetry, and reads for the literary journals Uncharted, Headland, Intrepidus Ink and Funicular Magazine. Amanda is fascinated by the opportunities presented by compressed fiction and how entire worlds can be portrayed within the most limited word counts.

Charles Olsen is a Nelson-born artist, writer and audiovisual creator, living in Spain. His most recent collection is Rebellious Sun (Olifante, 2022), and his paintings and award-winning poetry films have been shown internationally. He runs the Given Words competition for National Poetry Day and is preparing the special 10th edition which will launch on 1st August 2025. @colsenart

Ghazaleh Gol is an Iranian New Zealand author, filmmaker and academic based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her first book was The Girl From Revolution Road. She has written for various publications including The Spinoff and is currently working as a screenwriter and director on a number of projects.

John Gallas is an Aotearoa-raised, Leicestershire-living poet of thirty collections, mostly with Carcanet, including eight books of translations from many world languages, including 52 Euros, The Song Atlas, Petrus Borel’s Rhapsodies, all at www.carcanet.co.uk.

Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and is the author of two novels and four poetry collections. At high school she learned basic French; however, along with her children and mokopuna, she’s now more invested in learning te reo Māori. She likes to imagine some of her whānau ending up trilingual.

Piet Nieuwland, a creative of Whangarei, has poetry and flash fiction appearing in Aotearoa/New Zealand and internationally in numerous print and online journals, anthologies and art exhibitions. His recent poetry collections, As light into water and We Enter The are published by Cyberwit. 

Born and raised in Kirikiriroa, Sharni Wilson is a Pākehā-Czech writer of fiction and a literary translator from the Japanese. Her work has appeared in Landfall, Newsroom, and takahē, among others. She was a finalist for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize in 2020 and in 2023 won the AT THE BAY | I TE KOKORU inaugural award for a manuscript of hybrid works for her collection, One to many. 

Yoshiko Teraoka is a writer and art translator based in Tokyo. She graduated with a BFA (Hons) from the University of Auckland. Her work has been published in A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2021).

Editors

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021), and her extensive editing work includes this year’s multilingual anthologies Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories and Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages. She is Managing Editor of the Best Small Fictions series, and founder of NFFD NZ and Flash Frontier. She teaches creative writing at 52|250 A Year of Writing.

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) is one of the few World authors who consistently writes in and is published in te reo Māori (the Māori language). It is his mission to continue to do so and to push for a far wider recognition of the need to write and to be published in this tongue. His latest poetry collection is written exclusively in te reo Māori (with English language ‘translations’) is titled te pāhikahikatanga/incommensurability and was published by Flying Islands Books in Australia, 2023.

Avitus B. Carle
Avitus B(uckhaulter) Carle’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Commuter (Electric Lit.), The Rumpus, Waxwing, JMWW, and Shondaland, among others. Her work was selected for 2023 Wigleaf Top 50, 2024 and 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology, 2022 Best of the Net anthology and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Prize, and the Best Microfictions anthology. These Worn Bodies is her first collection of flash fiction. Find Avitus at https://www.avitusbcarle.com.

Claudia Monpere
Claudia Monpere’s flash fiction and flash CNF appear in Craft, Split Lip, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Forge, Trampset, Atlas and Alice, Milk Candy Review, and elsewhere. Her poems appear in such journals as The Cincinnati Review, Plume, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, and Hunger Mountain. She was awarded 1st place in Refractions: Genre Flash Fiction Prize by Uncharted Magazine, 2024, and she received the 2023 SmokeLong Workshop Prize. Her story, “Solar Flare” appears in Best Small Fictions 2024. Find Claudia at https://claudiamonpere.com.

Gillian O’Shaughnessy
Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a short fiction writer from Walyalup, Fremantle. She writes about home. Even when her stories are set in the stars, there’ll be some kind of reference to the landscapes and culture of Western Australia. Her work has been published in a range of journals, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, Splonk and Night Parrot Press, and chosen for the Best Small Fictions in 2023 and 2024. She’s been a submissions editor for SmokeLong Quarterly since 2021. Find Gillian at https://gillianoshaughnessy.com

Joel Hans
Joel Hans’ debut short story collection, The Bedtime Emptying of Our World, won the 2024 Moon City Short Fiction award and will be published in late 2025 with Moon City Press. His work appears in Best Small Fictions, Story, West Branch, The Journal, Booth, and others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona, and now edits Astrolabe, a literary journal in the form of a dynamic universe. Find him in Tucson, Arizona, where he lives with his family, or at joelhans.com.

Loren Maria Guay
Loren Maria Guay is a poet and speculative fiction writer. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in beestung, ANMLY, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Breakwater Review, and other publications; their work has been a finalist for the 2022 Peseroff Prize in Poetry and a Best of the Net nominee, and they were a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Their speculative fiction (as L.M. Guay) appears in Flash Fiction Online, khōréō, Small Wonders, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Apparition, among others, and in the 2024 Best Small Fictions anthology. Find Loren at https://lmguay.com/.

Mikki Aronoff
Mikki Aronoff lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. She has stories in Best Microfiction 2024 and in Best Small Fictions 2024 and upcoming in Best Microfiction 2025 and Best Small Fictions 2025.

Robert Scotellaro
Robert Scotellaro is the author of 10 collections of flash and microfiction and co-editor with James Thomas of the anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (W.W. Norton & Co.). A full-length collection of his prose poetry is forthcoming by ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS late this year. Other recent titles include: Quick Adjustments by Blue Light Press; God in a Can by Bamboo Dart Press; and What Are the Chances? by Press 53. Find Robert at https://robertscotellaro.com/.

Jeff Friedman
Jeff Friedman’s eleventh book, Broken Signals, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. Friedman’s poems and microfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Vestal Review, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, On the Seawall, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, Best Microfiction 2021 2022, 2023,2024,and 2025, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards. Find Jeff at https://poetjefffriedman.com/, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/poetjefffriedman.

Jeff is a special guest at the Best Small Fictions reading, where he will read stories by Robert Scotellaro.

Will Musgrove
Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wigleaf, Florida Review, Pinch, The Cincinnati Review, The Forge, Passages North, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Bluesky at @willmusgrove.bsky.social or at williammusgrove.com.

Introduced by: Myna Chang
Myna Chang is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her short fiction has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction, and her poetry has been named an Honorable Mention in the Rhysling Awards. She hosts Electric Sheep SF and publishes MicroVerse Recommended Reading. Find her at MynaChang.com or on Bluesky at @MynaChang.