LINKS, INTERVIEWS, UPDATES AND FLASH NEWS 

2017 news

FRANKIE MCMILLAN

In this new collection of flash fiction from Frankie McMillan, family relationships are explored through exaggeration, humour, and surreal eddies of simile and metaphor that broaden the pieces out to look askance at politics, culture and history. Although there are genuinely laugh aloud moments, usually the humour is ‘clandestine’: looking at human vulnerability and oddity, spotlighting miscommunication, yet doing so with fondness and empathy: a delight in all the rough edges between us that proximity can heighten – and yet which intimacy tries to soothe away.

Frankie McMillan’s small fictions capture disjunctions between child and adult, between cultures, personality types, man and woman. These compressed, often comic capsules of narrative convey a rich sense of family connection and also a child’s evolving self-awareness in a fractured, yet still enchanting, world. 

More about Frankie McMillan’s collection of small fictions, My Mother and the Hungarians, published by Canterbury University Press in 2016, here. 

LEANNE RADOJKOVICH

About Leanne Radojkovich’s story collection, First Fox, illustrated by Rachel Fenton:

The stories in First fox create an everyday world tinged with the dreamlike qualities of fairy tales. An old woman accidentally becomes a mother at 79, while a missing mother returns to her daughter as sunlight on a patch of grass. Radojkovich’s unsentimental style allows her to depict, with a dark surrealism, the strangeness that lurks at the fringes of suburban lawns. She explores the complex dynamics of families with a blend of dry wit and fugitive, startling imagery. In these stories, disappointments and consolations meet with fantastical moments that wind their way into the realm of possibility.

More at Emma Press.

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Four Flash Fiction Workshops in Northland

Martin Porter is leading four flash fiction workshops in Northland to coincide with the submission period for both the National Flash Fiction Day Competition and the Whangarei Library Northland Flash Fiction Competition.

The workshops are aimed at beginners and writers with limited experience. They will cover writing, structuring and editing flash, with an eye to competition entry as a secondary target. Entry is free, but prior registration at the Procter Library is required for the Kerikeri workshops.

Each workshop is planned to last 2 hours.

Workshops:

• Whangarei Central Library: Tuesday April 4th, 10:30am – 12:30pm
• Kerikeri Procter Library: Thursday April 6th, 10:30am – 12:30pm
• Kerikeri Procter Library: Thursday April 6th, 2:00pm – 4:00pm
• Whangarei Central Library: Saturday April 8th,10:30am – 12:30pm

Martin Porter is a writer of poetry and flash fiction. He has had work published in journals in New Zealand, USA and UK and was a judge for the Northland Flash Fiction competition in 2014 and 2015. 

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2017 opens with new issue of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, edited by 2017 NFFD judge Michael Harlow. Also a discussion with Michael Harlow and Michelle Elvy, an interview with the other NFFD judge Emma Neale and more flash updates from NZ, the US and more.

Events planned for 2017 in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington and Northland. Watch this space for announcements!

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Judges for 2017 announced: Michael Harlow and Emma Neale!

New Youth Category for the 2017 competition, with Fleur Beale and Heather McQuillan judging!

Competition details here.

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Micro Madness 2017 judges: Frances Gapper and Nod Ghosh!

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2016

NFFD 2016 in the news! Year Five marked our biggest year yet. “If writing is all about choosing the best words, flash fiction is about choosing the fewest best words.” So begins this feature in Stuff.co.nz by Eleanor Black. Read more here.

2016 WINNERS posted June 22! With judges’ comments. All winning stories to be published in July in Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.

Heather McQuillan’s winning story featured in the NZ Herald Saturday, June 25!

Northland flash workshop and reading June 25. See Events page for details.

NFFD’s Michelle Elvy judges Bath Flash Fiction Award. Winners and judge’s comments announced here (see links to the right for separate stories). See interview and flash recommendations here and here.

UK NFFD June 25! Competitions, workshops, readings, celebrations and more! Details here.

Tiny Tales — a new series of very very small stories — shared this year, here.

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Megan Bowers-Vette, Featherdance

An interview with the 2016 NFFD judges Elizabeth Smither and James Norcliffe at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.

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Micro Madness includes a story a day June 1 – 22. Go here to read all the micros in the series, accompanied by big splashes of art. Micros across hemispheres, from New Zealand to the England, from Australia to Italy and France, from Ghana to Wales and the US… Three winners will be announced June 22 at New Zealand’s NFFD events.

Included in the series (selected by judges Nod Ghosh and Robert Scotellaro, reading ‘blind’ from scores of submissions): Eileen Merriman, Jonathan Cardew, Shelby Allan, Mohini Malhotra, Wiebo Grobler, Patrick Pink, Bronwen Griffiths, Rachel Smith, Collette Watson, Catherine McNamara, Nikki Crutchley, Todd Mercer, Lola Elvy, Meg Pokrass, Brindi Joy, Jocelyne Gregory, Jayne Martin, Tristan Deeley, Jude Higgins, Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Heather McQuillan. 

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Mike Perusse, Condensation on Tart Bakery window

Haere mai  ~ Bienvedido ~ Welcome ~ Bienvenue ~ Willkommen ! Karibu!

Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction‘s June issue is here! Themed ‘stolen’ and featuring 22 stories from around the world. Guest edited by Frankie McMillan and Sherrie Flick. Beautiful stories and art in celebration of this big month of flash.

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UK NFFD Flash Flood call for submissions! Send your flash by June 22 for consideration in this big flash series. About Flash Flood: The aim is simple, wherever you are in the world, we want your best flash-fictions. The word limit is 500 words, but that’s the only rule. Any subject, any genre, any style, any perspective, anything as long as it’s flash. The stories will be posted regularly throughout the day on National Flash-Fiction Day,  Saturday 25th June 2016, providing you with a constant diet of brand new flash-fictions to fill your day.

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NFFD UK anthology is here! Introducing A Box of Stars beneath the Bed, eds. Calum Kerr, Nuala Ni Chonchuir and  Santino Prinzi — including New Zealand writers Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan and other fine writers such as Catherine McNamara, Meg Pokrass,  Paul McVeigh, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Jude Higgins,Nik Perring, KM Elkes, Angela Readman and many more.

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Flash on the radio! Sam Averis and Nod Ghosh read their NFFD short-listed stories; Brindi Joy discusses NFFD 2016 with Morrin Rout and reads her Micro Madness entry. Here at Plains FM.

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More flash on the radio! Jayne Martin reads her Micro Madness story at Blink Ink’s Dance Party, Vol. 1: 11 authors reading 25+ microfiction stories. Catfish McDaris, Nancy Stohlman, Meg Tuite, Jonathan Cardew, Jayne Martin, Gay Degani, Paul Beckman, Sharon Coleman, Lynn Mundell, and headlined by Blink Ink’s team and featured dancers Sally Reno and Doug Matthewson.

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Best Small Fictions 2016 to be released Sept/ Oct! Winners and semi-finalists, including New Zealand’s Liz Morton; first review here; Goodreads review here.

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Bath Flash Fiction Award! Long List announced Monday, June 20 — here. 50 stories selected from hundreds of entries. Winners announced June 25.  About BFFA: We aim to encourage writers to develop their skills by creating pieces of 300 words or less in an atmosphere of awarded competition. We also intend to promote flash fictionand bring the genre to a wider audience. By way of meeting this commitment, we also run the very successful Ad Hoc Fiction project, an entirely free initiative aimed at promoting reading and writing of the very short form.

Two-time NFFD winner Frankie McMillan will see her new collection of prose poems and short fictions published in August by Canterbury University Press.  From the publisher: In this new collection, Frankie McMillan develops a sweetly eccentric ‘fictional memoir’ as family relationships and the experience of refugees in 1950s New Zealand are explored through exaggeration, humour, and surreal eddies of simile and metaphor that broaden the pieces out to look askance at politics, culture and history. These compressed, often comic, capsules of narrative convey a rich sense of family connection, of the lives of Hungarian immigrants to New Zealand and also of a child’s evolving self-awareness in a fractured, yet still enchanting, world.

2016 NFFD judge and Flash Frontier Editor James Norcliffe has a new book coming out in August by Victoria University Press.  Praise for Dark Days at the Oxygen Cafe includes David Eggleton: “His poems invariably get us to attend more closely to the spirit of existence, to moments of being.”