National Flash Fiction Day 2025

The 2025 competition is now open.

Submit your entry by 30 April!

Prizes:

First: $1000
Second: $400
Third: $200

Submissions guidelines and entry rules are below.

Judges

The 2025 NFFD judges are Brannavan Gnanalingam and Vana Manasiadis.

The 2025 NFFD youth judge is Shilo Kino.

Flash fiction – a rooster running this way and that, his red comb lighting small fires in the woods.

Frankie McMillan

Writing flash fiction is like riding a wobbly unicycle between suggestion and explanation, between innuendo and a slap in the face, between compression and deflation, between rabbit and hat, between poetry and prose. Writing it successfully, is negotiating a tiny circuit without falling off.

James Norcliffe

There’s hardly any form that offers so much fun among so many challenges and at the same time teaches you so much about life.

Elizabeth Smither

The best stories are those where the reader is made immediately but implicitly aware that something else is going on here. These stories are artful, but so well crafted, so cleverly understated, that the reader becomes irresistibly engaged with the story.

Graeme Lay

A good flash piece is a tickle, a pinch or a slap, and leaves the mind tingling. Poetry can do that too, but more through surprising use of words, than through plot or an unseen ending.

P S Cottier

Short on words but long on depth, flash fiction stings like good poetry. Punchy, succinct and surprising, the best flash stories shift the reader’s heart but they also keep it beating hard.

Nuala Ni Chonchuir

Brannavan Gnanalingam

Brannavan Gnanalingam is a novelist and lawyer based in Wellington. He has written eight novels, including Sprigs and Sodden Downstream (both shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Foundation Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards) and A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse (longlisted for the same award). He is also a regular columnist for the Sunday Star-Times and won a Qantas Media Award (as it was then known) in 2009 as a reviewer with the Lumière Reader. His latest novel is The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat.

Vana Manasiádis

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.

Shilo Kino

Youth judge Shilo Kino (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapotoi) is the author of All That We Know, published by Moa Press in July 2024 and long-listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in the Ockham Book Awards. Her first novel The Porangi Boy won the Young Adult Fiction Award at the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards. Her work has published in the New Zealand Herald, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, The Guardian, Stuff and Huia Short Stories collections.

YOUTH COMPETITION: How to enter

Please see below for details for youth submissions.

ADULT COMPETITION: How to enter

To enter the 2025 National Flash Fiction Day competition, please follow these easy steps:

Payment:

Make your online payment here:

ANZ / National Flash Fiction Competition/ Acct No. 06-0350-0849733-00
include ‘Surname, First initial’ as a reference

Once you’ve transferred your entry fee, send proof of payment (a phone capture or screen shot will do – see the link provided) along with your NFFD story/ stories to info@nationalflash.org.
You will receive confirmation of your entry within 72 hours. If you do not hear from NFFD, please email again.
All entries must be received electronically. If you are not online and wish to submit, please have a friend submit via email.

2025 fees: $10.00 per story or $24.00 for 3 stories (3 stories max per entrant)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

(See General Rules for further details)

Submissions open through 30 April 2025
Competition open to all NZ citizens and residents
Open competition; no theme or prompt
Only previously unpublished work will be considered (see General Rules)
No AI-generated work. This competition encourages original storytelling by individuals, without the assistance of AI.
Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2025 (midnight)
Word limit for all submissions (all categories): 300 excluding title
1.5 or double spaced, and all of your submissions in one document but no pdfs
Times New Roman, Calibri or another plain font, 12pt – no fancy fonts!
Maximum 3 stories per entrant; please include your submissions in one document
Please do not send three separate files – you will be asked to resubmit if you do
Electronic submissions only, emailed to nationalflash@gmail.com
Submissions must be sent as attachments (not in the body of the email)
Send one of the following formats: .doc, .docx, .rtf; please, no pdfs
No pdfs!
Submissions must be received no later than midnight, 30 April 2025
Your name may be in the email and any enquiries made to NFFD in the Gmail account, but do not include your name or contact info on the attachments. Any submissions with author name on the attachment with the story text will be disqualified.
Judges’ decisions are final. No feedback will be offered on an individual basis.
Long lists will be announced mid-May and shortlists in early June.
Winners will be announced on National Flash Fiction Day, June 22.
Winners and short-listed work will be published in a special winter edition of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.

GENERAL RULES

Payment:

NFFD reserves the right at its total discretion to reject any entry in the Competition and to verify the validity of any entry or vote. All decisions of the NFFD shall be final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Entries must be original, previously unpublished pieces of work written by the person who submits the piece of work. Published means anything that has already appeared anywhere in print or online, including personal websites or blogs.
Entries cannot be altered or changed after they have been submitted.
NFFD accepts no responsibility for late, lost or misdirected entries.
NFFD is unable to return submitted entries. Entrants are advised to keep a copy of their entry for their records.
The judges’ decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.
The judges reserve the right to not award prizes, based on their judgment of the quality of submissions.
Partners, parents and children of the NFFD Central Committee and current judges are not eligible to enter the competition
Winners will be announced June 22 at the NFFD award ceremonies and all winners are invited to attend and share their stories in their local 2025 celebrations.
A selection of entries will be published in a special winter edition of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction. Writers retain the copyright to their submitted short story regardless of whether or not it is chosen for publication. NFFD retains unlimited use of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place Short Story (all categories) for an unlimited period of time for any promotion or publication.
The winners’ names, entry details, biographical information and photographs may be required by NFFD and will be used for publicity/promotional purposes without compensation. Entrants consent to this use of their details by entering the competition.
The NFFD association, its committee members and its related agencies shall not be liable for any loss, damage or injury suffered or sustained (including but not limited to direct or consequential loss or loss arising from negligence) arising directly out of or in connection with the competition or any prize.

Entry constitutes acceptance of all National Flash Fiction Day Competition Rules and Guidelines.

YOUTH COMPETITION: SUBMISSION details & Guidelines

Submission period: 01 March to 30 April 2025
Unthemed; previously unpublished work only
No AI-generated work. This competition promotes the creative spirit that resides inside all of us.
Long lists announced in mid-May, shortlists in early June, winners on National Flash Fiction Day, June 22
Winners and short-listed work will be published in a special edition of fingers comma toes.

Submission guidelines (see General Rules for further details):

What to submit:
- Short stories/prose up to 300 words excluding title
- Only previously unpublished work will be considered (see General Rules)
- Open competition; no theme or prompt
- Maximum 3 stories per entrant; please include submissions in one document
How to submit:
- Submit through email at nationalflash[at]gmail[dot]com
- Not in the subject line: NFFD 2025 YOUTH ENTRY
- Submit stories as one document
- Do not include author’s name or contact info on the submitted document (name may be included in the email or in any enquiries made via email)
- Send submissions as an attachment in one of the following formats: .txt, .doc, .docx, .rtf
- Please, no pdfs or Google Docs
Who can submit:
- Entrants can be up to age 18 (for those 19 or older, please see above details for Adult Competition)
- Competition is open to international entrants
- Family members of current judges and NFFD central committee members are not eligible to enter the competition

Judges’ decisions are final; no feedback will be offered on an individual basis. Winners and short-listed work will be published in a special edition of fingers comma toes. You can find past winning stories here.

GENERAL RULES

NFFD and fingers comma toes reserve the right at their total discretion to reject any entry in the Competition and to verify the validity of any entry or vote. All decisions of this competition shall be final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Entries must be original, previously unpublished pieces of work written by the person who submits the piece of work. Published means anything that has already appeared anywhere in print or online, including personal websites or blogs.
Entries cannot be altered or changed after they have been submitted.
NFFD accepts no responsibility for late, lost or misdirected entries.
NFFD is unable to return submitted entries. Entrants are advised to keep a copy of their entry for their records.
The judges’ decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.
The judges reserve the right to not award prizes, based on their judgment of the quality of submissions.
Family members of current judges are not eligible to enter the competition
Winners will be announced June 22 at the NFFD award ceremonies and all winners are invited to attend and share their stories in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Northland, Taranaki, Waikato and Wellington, and online in our international readings for all participants outside of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Writers retain the copyright to their submitted short story regardless of whether or not it is chosen for publication. NFFD and fingers comma toes retain unlimited use of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place Short Story (all categories) for an unlimited period of time for any promotion or publication.
The winners’ names, entry details, biographical information and photographs may be required by NFFD/ fingers comma toes and will be used for publicity/promotional purposes without compensation. Entrants consent to this use of their details by entering the competition.
The NFFD association, its committee members and its related agencies shall not be liable for any loss, damage or injury suffered or sustained (including but not limited to direct or consequential loss or loss arising from negligence) arising directly out of or in connection with the competition or any prize.

Entry constitutes acceptance of all National Flash Fiction Day Competition Rules and Guidelines.

Previous Judges

2012 Graeme Lay, Tina Shaw, Stephen Stratford
2013 David Lyndon Brown, Vivienne Plumb
2014 Mary McCallum, Frankie McMillan
2015 Fiona Kidman, Owen Marshall
2016 James Norcliffe, Elizabeth Smither
2017 Michael Harlow, Emma Neale
2018 Tracey Slaughter, Sue Wootton
2019 Siobhan Harvey, Lloyd Jones
2020 Sandra Arnold, Helen Heath
2021 Diane Brown, Paula Morris
2022 Anne Kennedy, Kiri Piahana-Wong
2023 Airini Beautrais, David Eggleton
2024 Lynn Jenner, Rachel O'Neill