2020 NFFD CONTRIBUTORS

The Art of Writing Small: A Roundtable with Journal Editors Around the World 

Christopher Allen, SmokeLong Quarterly (Germany), is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins. His work has appeared most recently in The Best Small Fictions 2019, Booth and Gone Lawn. Allen is a teacher, a cook and a nomad.

Rupert Dastur, The Short Story (UK), is a writer, editor, and publisher. Currently, he lives in London and, through TSS, directs The Cambridge Short Story Prize. Additionally, Rupert is Associate Editor at The Word Factory, Events Coordinator for the Society of Young Publishers and curates WritingCompetitions.org. Rupert writes short stories, flash fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews. He runs writing workshops and has also spoken about short fiction and publishing across the U.K. and abroad – most recently in Bangladesh at the Dhaka Literary Festival 2018. At the moment, he’s busy finishing his debut novel, ‘To the Slaughter’.

Grant Faulkner, 100 Word Story (US), is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has 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. He’s also published a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. 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, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He 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.

Ingrid Jendrzejewski, FlashBack Fiction (UK), is a flash editor at JMWW, and has served as both non-fiction editor and editor-in-chief of the Evansville Review.  She has published over 100 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. Her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for Bath Flash Fiction Award’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Vestal Review’s VERA Award, and multiple times for Best Small Fictions. She is co-director of National Flash Fiction Day UK.

Nuala O’Connor, Splonk (Ireland), lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. In 2019 she won the James Joyce Quarterly competition to write the missing story from Dubliners, ‘Ulysses’. Her fourth novel, Becoming Belle, was recently published to critical acclaim in the US, Ireland and the UK. Her forthcoming novel is about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce.  Her collections include Joyride to Jupiter (short story) and The Juno Charm (poetry.  Nuala’s flash’ RedDog’ made the Wigleaf Top 50 2020.

Vaughan Rapatahana, Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction (Aotearoa New Zealand) commutes between Hong Kong SAR, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genres in Māori, English and other languages. Though perhaps best known for his poetry, his bibliography also includes prose fiction, educational material, academic articles, philosophy and language critiques. Vaughan experienced a varied career before becoming a writer, working as a secondary schoolteacher, housepainter, storeman, freezing worker, and special education advisor. He was poetry editor of the Māori and Indigenous Review Journal until 2011. He was a semi-finalist in the Proverse Prize for Literature in 2009 and highly commended in the 2013 erbacce poetry prize (from 6000+ entrants). He won the inaugural Proverse Poetry prize in 2016, the same year as his poetry collection Atonement was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines. His work has also been featured in Best New Zealand Poems 2017 and Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (2018).

Moderator: Jordan Hamel, Stasis Journal. Jordan Hamel (he/him) is a Pōneke-based poet and performer. He is the co-editor of Stasis Journal. He was the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam champion and has words published or forthcoming in Poetry New Zealand, takahē, Landfall, Sport, Mimicry, Mayhem and elsewhere. Jordan also occasionally writes things for The Spinoff and previously for The Niche Cache.  He’s obsessed with all things pop culture and NBA. He’s also an MC, aspiring spoken word educator and disgraced sudoku champion.

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Imagination Unbound: Five Women on the Poetic Narrative Form 

      

Diane Brown, Every Now and then I Have Another Child (Otago University Press, 2020). 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, winner of the NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the Montana Book Awards 1997, and Learning to Lie Together (2004); two novels, If The Tongue Fits (1999) and Eight Stages of Grace (a verse novel, a finalist in the Montana Book Awards 2003); a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers (2004) and a prose/poetic work, Here Comes Another Vital Moment (2006) and an extended poetic memoir, Taking My Mother To The Opera, Otago University Press (2015). She has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and was an inaugural fellow at the Michael King Writer’s Studio. She won the Janet Frame Memorial Award in 2012 and the Beatson Fellowship in 2013. 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.

Nod Ghosh, Filthy Sucre (three novellas, Truth Serum Press, 2020). Nod Ghosh is a graduate of the Hagley Writers’ Institute in Christchurch. Nod’s flash fiction, poems and short stories have been published in numerous international and New Zealand journals, including Landfall, JAAM and takahē. Her first book was  The Crazed Wind (a novella in flash, Truth Serum Press, 2018). Nod has judged short story and poetry competitions and regularly offers critique in a range of genres including flash fiction and novels. Nod was associate editor for Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction (2016), and is a relief teacher at Write On − The School for Young Writers in Christchurch. http://www.nodghosh.com/about

Gail Ingram, Contents Under Pressure (Pukeko Publishing 2019). Gail Ingram writes and lives on the Port Hills of Christchurch. She is the editor of two anthologies, The Unnecessary Invention of Punctuation (NZPS 2018) and after the cyclone (NZPS 2017). Her work has been widely published and anthologised in journals such as Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Atlanta Review, Blue Five Notebook, Cordite Poetry Review, Fib Review and Bonsai. Her awards include winning both the Caselberg (2019) and New Zealand Poetry Society (2016) international poetry competitions, and placing third in Poets Meet Politics (UK) 2018 international poetry competition. In fiction, awards include runner up Flash Fiction Day NZ Micro Madness, shortlist for Fish Short Prize, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She edits at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, and is also joint poetry editor for takahē magazine. She teaches at Write On: School for Young Writers and holds a Master of Creative Writing (Distinction). You can find her at https://www.theseventhletter.nz/

Anne Kennedy, Moth Hour (Victoria University Press, 2019), short-listed in the poetry category in the 2020 Ockham Book Awards. Anne Kennedy is a poet, fiction writer and screenplay editor. Her latest book, Moth Hour (AUP), was short-listed in the 2020 Ockham Book Awards. A novel, The Ice Shelf (VUP), appeared in 2018. Awards and residencies include the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry, the Montana Book Award for Poetry, the University of Iowa International Writers’ Program, and the IIML Writers’ Residency. Anne has taught creative writing at the University of Hawai`i and at Manukau Institute of Technology.

Helen Rickerby, How to Live (Auckland University Press, 2019), winner of the poetry category in the 2020 Ockham Book Awards.  Helen Rickerby is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently How to Live.  Since 2004 she has single-handedly run boutique publishing company Seraph Press, an increasingly important publisher, mainly of New Zealand poetry. Helen lives in a cliff-top tower in Aro Valley, Wellington, and works as an editor.

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Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction: an international reading 

CONTRIBUTORS FROM Best Microfiction 2020

Steven John’s writing has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, Spelk, Fictive Dream, EllipsisZine and Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020, among others. He’s won Bath Ad Hoc Fiction a record seven times. Steven lives in The Cotswolds, England, and is Fiction & Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review. Twitter:  @StevenJohnWrite http://www.stevenjohnwriter.co.uk

Kathryn Kulpa makes up songs in her sleep, then forgets them by morning. Her work has appeared in Milk Candy Review, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and 100 Word Story, and she is a flash fiction editor for Cleaver magazine. She was born in a small state, and she writes short stories.

jj peña is a queer, burrito-blooded writer living & existing in el paso, texas. he is the winner of blue earth review’s 2019 flash fiction contest, cutbank’s 2019 big sky, small prose contest, & mythic picnic’s 2020 postcard prize. his stories have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, hobart, new delta review, wigleaf, the kenyon review  and elsewhere.

Michelle Ross is the author of There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You (2017), which won the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. Her fiction has recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, The Pinch, Wigleaf and other venues. Her work has been selected for Best Microfictions 2020 and the Wigleaf Top 50 2019, as well as been a finalist for Best of the Net 2019 and the Lascaux Prize in short fiction and flash fiction and long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 2017 and 2020, among other awards. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review.

Charmaine Wilkerson is an American writer who lives in Italy. She is a former journalist whose flash fiction can be found in various anthologies and magazines, including Best Microfiction 2020 and 2019. Her novella-in-flash How to Make a Window Snake is the winner of a Bath Novella-in-Flash Award and the UK’s Saboteur Award for Best Novella.

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind, has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This, was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.

CONTRIBUTORS FROM Best Small Fictions 2020

Micah Dean Hicks is the author of the novel Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones and the story collection Electricity and Other Dreams. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, has been awarded the Calvino Prize, and is a two-time finalist for the Nelson Algren Award. His writing has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The New York Times, Lightspeed, Nightmare and elsewhere. Hicks grew up in rural southwest Arkansas and now lives in Orlando. He teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida.

Omotara James is the author of the chapbook, Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. She has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. She is a recipient of the 2019 92Y / Discovery Poetry Prize. Her work was selected for the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology and she was a 2019 finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in POETRY magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, Platypus Press,The Believer, Literary Hub, Poetry Society of America and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and lives in New York City.

Angie Sijun Lou is from Seattle and Shanghai. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the American Poetry Review,  FENCE, Black Warrior Review, the Adroit Journal, the Asian American Literary Review, Hyphen, the Margins and others. She is a Kundiman Fellow in Fiction and a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Rachel Smith lives in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her writing has been published in journals and anthologies, including Best Microfiction 2019 and Bonsai – Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been short-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and TSS International Flash Fiction, and placed second in 2017 NZ National Flash Fiction Day. She is script writer for a feature film Stranded Pearl due for release in 2020.

Lavanya Vasudevan is an engineer-turned-writer who lives in the Seattle area and reviews children’s books for Kirkus. Her writing has been published in Wigleaf, Paper Darts, The Masters Review Anthology, and elsewhere. Find her online at lavanyavasudevan.com and on Twitter @vanyala.

EDITORS

Best Microfictions

Gary Fincke‘s latest collection is The Sorrows (Stephen F. Austin, 2020). Earlier collections have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction and the Elixir Press Fiction Prize. His flash story, ‘The Corridors of Longing’, originally in New Flash Fiction Review, will be included in Best Small Fictions 2020. A new essay, ‘After the Three-Moon Era’, has been selected to appear in Best American Essays 2020.

Meg Pokrass is the author of six flash fiction collections and 2 books of hybrid prose, Cellulose Pajamas and Spinning To Mars, both of which received San Francisco’s Blue Light Book Award. Her work has appeared in hundreds of magazines including Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review, Craft, SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review and Wigleaf, and her flash has been widely internationally anthologized in two Norton Anthology Readers, The Best Small Fictions,  Wigleaf Top 50 and numerous other anthologies. She currently serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020, Founding Editor of New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Fiction Editor at Mslexia, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival U.K. Meg teaches flash fiction workshops online and in person. Find out more at megpokrass.com.

Best Small Fictions

Nathan Leslie is the editor of Best Small Fictions. He won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his 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 the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of the new online journal 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, US, with his wife, Julie.

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Moderator, Constance Talbot. Constance Talbot is the Chair of the Wellington Writers Walk and Area Director, Toastmasters New Zealand in Wellington. She also serves on the Central Committee for National Flash Fiction Day NZ. She is an active member of the Wellington literary community and chairs the local NFFD city event there.

Youth Voices: Five writers discuss poetry, story and activism through words

Lucy Kennedy (age 12; Auckland, New Zealand)

Lucy Kennedy is 12 years old and was born in Auckland, New Zealand.  She loves cats, cups of tea, chocolate lamingtons, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children (would recommend) and Tim Burton movies.  Lucy enjoys writing short stories and is currently working on her first novel.

Denika Mead (age 16; Wellington, New Zealand)

Denika lives in Wellington, New Zealand. She is 16 and has an unrelenting passion for fantasy and dystopian writing. She published her debut novel Royal Orchid, The Death-Hunters, in October 2019 when she was 15. The prequel to Royal Orchid, Into the Flames, was released on April 3rd, 2020. Her third book is in the early editing stages and is due to be released late 2020. Over the past few years, she has won and been a finalist in several youth writing competitions, including being a two-time finalist in the New Zealand Youth Laurate award 2018. Denika was a finalist in the Best New Talent category for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards in 2020. www.denikameadauthor.com

Penelope Duran (age 17; Frankfurt, Germany)

Penny Duran’s educational journey began at Dyer St. Kindy in Lower Hutt, Wellington.  As a child in a U.S. diplomatic family, she has also lived in the Philippines, Egypt, Poland and Germany.  She is educated in the German school system and has achieved recognition for her poems, short stories and personal memoirs in English and German.  In addition to creative writing, Penny’s other passion is physics, and she enjoys ballet and ballroom dancing.

Freddie Gormack-Smith (age 19; Christchurch, New Zealand)

Freddie Gormack-Smith is a poet and flash fiction writer from Christchurch NZ, currently in his first year of an English degree at the University of Canterbury. Before that he was a student with the School for Young Writers in Christchurch from the age of 11, who successfully converted him to flash fiction and he hasn’t looked back since. His work has regularly appeared in the annual Re-draft anthologies and Write-On Magazine, where he had the privilege to be a featured writer in 2019.

Samantha Jory-Smart (age 19; Christchurch, New Zealand)

Samantha Jory-Smart currently studies at the University of Canterbury and is an established poet. Her poetry has received many awards, including first place in both the New Zealand Poetry Society’s Anthology open junior section 2018 and the We Could Be Heroes Poetry Competition 2017. In 2018, Samantha worked with Ōtākaro Ltd. to curate a poetry mural on Armagh Street. The poems were linked through their multi-faceted approaches to the topic of climate change. Last year, she spoke at the Enviro-Past conference about the intersection between art and climate change. She has also worked with the School for Young Writers throughout high school.

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Lola Elvy, Moderator

Lola Elvy writes music, poetry, and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to writing, she is passionate about language, mathematics, and the environment, and speaks English, German, and Swedish. After living and travelling for seventeen years on a sailboat, she is now based in Dunedin, studying Music and Physics at the University of Otago. Her poetry has been featured in Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review, and The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (anthology, 2018). Lola edits the journal fingers comma toes.

Micro Madness 2020 

All Micro Madness writers can be found at the above link. The 2020 Micro Madness finalists are:

Mileva Anastasiadou * Amy Barnes * Jodi Barnes * S. B. Borgersen * Sharon Boyle * Diana Burns * Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar * Rose Collins * Judy Darley * Jacques Denault * María C. Domínguez * Bronwen Griffiths * Sheila Hailstone * Charlotte Hamrick * Bronwyn Hegarty * Sara Hills * Marissa Hoffman * Ursula Hoult * Gail Ingram * John Irvine * Kim Jackways * Jac Jenkins * Erik Kennedy * Dallas Kidd * Heather McQuillan * Pam Morrison * Nora Nadjarian * Mandira Pattnaik * Sam Payne * Cherllisha Silva * Rachel Smith * Sophie van Llewyn * Lois Villemaire * Susan Wardell * Nan Wigington * Sophia Wilson * Kay Wise * R. P. Wood * Jenny Woodhouse * John Yohe * Lucy Zhang

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THE 2020 COMPETITION JUDGES

SANDRA ARNOLD and HELEN HEATH 

Sandra Arnold lives in rural Canterbury. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, Australia, and is the author of five books. Her most recent are a novel, The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell (Mākaro Press, NZ, 2019), which was a finalist in the 2019 New Zealand Heritage Book Awards, and a flash fiction collection, Soul Etchings (Retreat West Books, UK, 2019). Her short fiction has been widely published in New Zealand and internationally. sandraarnold.co.nz

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Helen Heath is a poet and essayist from the Kapiti Coast. Her debut collection of poetry, Graft, won the Best First Book of Poetry award and was the first book of fiction or poetry to be shortlisted for the Royal Society of NZ Science Book Prize. Helen thinks poetry can be a way of engaging people with big ideas and trying them on for size – a public conversation about what we want the future to be like. Her latest collection, which won the 2019 Ockham Book Awards, is called Are Friends Electric? and is about people, animals and technology. helenheath.com

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