FlashFiction.Net

STRIPPED is a collection of gender-twisting “anonymous” flash fictions. (continue reading)

A reprint from a chapter of Michael Kimball’s US, along with a critical reading of Kimball’s use of universality through specificity. (continue reading)

Rose Metal Press announces its 6th annual short short chapbook contest (continue reading)

Matter Press releases its second collection of (very) short fiction, Jeff Landon’s TRUCK DANCE. (continue reading)

A link to new compressed, flash fiction from Michael Kimball at The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. (continue reading)

The 150-word “Homeward Bound” competes for $25,000 prize! (continue reading)

In Alice Munro’s story “The Lives of Girls and Women,” a young girl Del confronts the organizing principles of the people in the Canadian small town of Jubilee. Religion, neighbors, sex, marriages, gender, love, social mores—all these throw obstacles in the way of Del as she seeks to grow into womanhood. The story begins with Del’s search for glory in her small town, and that search for glory becomes connected to sex, as she finds a “sex” book belonging to Del’s friend Naomi’s mother. Mr. Chamberlain, a male friend of a boarder in Del’s house, gropes Del, leading to further encounters with Mr. Chamberlain. Del returns from these encounters, that journey into chaos, with a new understanding of sex, of men, of the type of woman Fern desires to become. (continue reading)

For almost three years, wherever he went, Victor Stabin brought a dictionary along. Combing through over 8,000 pages of a variety of dictionaries, he came up with the alliterations that inhabit this work. (continue reading)

This entry in the Monomyth series looks at James Joyce’s “Araby” and how the monomyth works to both structure the story and provide its meaning. (continue reading)

For almost three years, wherever he went, Victor Stabin brought a dictionary along. Combing through over 8,000 pages of a variety of dictionaries, he came up with the alliterations that inhabit this work. (continue reading)

We republish a look at Kathy Fish’s “Wren” to celebrate the release of her flash fiction collection WILD LIFE. (continue reading)

“When people stop to ask you what you are doing, tell them that you are reading aloud from a collection by the best flash fiction writer in America.” (continue reading)

For almost three years, wherever he went, Victor Stabin brought a dictionary along. Combing through over 8,000 pages of a variety of dictionaries, he came up with the alliterations that inhabit this work. (continue reading)

A review of Tiff Holland’s award-winning flash collection BETTY SUPERMAN (continue reading)

Thomas Cooper’s flash fiction collection Phantasmagoria is a gripping 44-page compilation of intense short pieces constructed on themes of love and loss. T (continue reading)

An interactive interview about flash fiction. (continue reading)

The stories in Claudia Smith’s PUT YOUR HEAD IN MY LAP are heartbreaking in their honesty. Nothing is sugar-coated and while readers may feel the need to look away from the raw emotion displayed on the pages, their eyes can’t help but be drawn back. (continue reading)

A review of Rose Metal Press’s THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES: “The overall wonder of this plump little gem is that there is no jockeying for space, no jostling of elbows, no stepping on toes.” (continue reading)

The best flash fiction I ever wrote—at least it contained some of my best stuff—there’s about a million drafts of it in this drawer here, I couldn’t finish it. I found that I was faking things all the time, dodging issues and letting my characters dodge them. (continue reading)

Jim Harrington provides a work-in-progress comprehensive list of markets for flash fiction. (continue reading)

A review of Sudden Fiction Latino: editors Robert Shapard, James Thomas, and Ray Gonzalez (continue reading)

A review of Elizabeth Colen’s prose poetry collection Money for Sunsets (continue reading)

A reading of Hemingway’s famous six-word story. (continue reading)

A review of Barry Graham’s 21 stories in The National Virginity Pledge, a collection that runs away from expectations. (continue reading)

At the Matter Press blog, David Aichenbaum looks at the “So what?” phenomenon of True Grit and compressed creative arts, such as flash fiction. (continue reading)

A review of Caia Hagel’s chapbook about a man in his twenties still wearing the Spiderman costume his mother made for him. (continue reading)

A review of Joshua Cohen’s BRIDGE & TUNNEL (TUNNEL & BRIDGE), from The Cupboard Pamphlet. (continue reading)

An excerpt and reading from Catherine Kasper’s NOTES FROM THE COMMITTEE. (continue reading)

A reprint from Quick Fiction #11 of Mary Beth Caschetta’s “First in Line.” (continue reading)

Flash fiction writer, Susan Buchler, dances with each word of Curtis Smith’s story “In the Jukebox Light.” (continue reading)

Amy Kates unpacks painstaking language in Kim Chinquee’s “I Had Time to Kill.” (continue reading)

Flash fiction writer, Heather Vann, explores the emotional roller coaster David Tallerman invites his readers and characters to ride in his story “Strive to be Happy.” (continue reading)

In 158 words, Sarah Black’s “Barista” captures a quiet moment in time. Flash writer Meghan Rogers believes readers will connect to Brown’s story. (continue reading)

Tara Laskowski’s “Hamster” takes the reader on a journey. Writer Carrie Capili is right there in the process. (continue reading)

Joanna Leigh Simon digs deep into the world of Mark Yarich and finds truth and beauty in his story “Echo.” (continue reading)

A reprint of Tiff Holland’s BUTTER PECAN FOR EVERYONE, a flash fiction piece that originally appeared in EXPOSURE. (continue reading)

Flash fiction writer Katie Baker reviews Michelle Reale’s flash fiction piece “What Passes For Normal” published with Elimae. (continue reading)

Noticing the smart and unexpected language, writer, Rachel Whitaker comments on Lauren Goodwin Slaugher’s flash fiction story “After Your Milk Comes In.” (continue reading)

Lisa Selin Davis’ cheeky language captures Alina Ladyzhensky’s attention. Ladyzhensky dives into the story and uncovers the flashy “Good Women.” (continue reading)

Author Garret Gaudens digs deep into the richness of Larry Fondation’s flash fiction piece, “Hilfiger.” (continue reading)

Fiction writer Benjamin Gross reviews Craige Reeves’ haunting flash fiction story “The Pit # 1.” This story first appeared in Reeves’ Flash Fiction (Vantage Press Inc.) (continue reading)

Flash fiction writer Jordan Blum provides commentary on Michelle Reale’s flash fiction piece “What Passes For Normal” from SmokeLong Quarterly. (continue reading)

A review with reprints and commentary of Pamela Painter’s collection of very short stories WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW. (continue reading)

A reprint of Eric Bosse’s “Onion Ring” from SNOW MONKEY. (continue reading)

A review and reading of Wendy Barker’s NOTHING BETWEEN US, “a bittersweet, erotically compelling love affair between a white married high school teacher and one of her African-American colleagues” (Sandra M. Gilbert) (continue reading)

The literary journal wigleaf celebrates hint fiction: a story of 25 words or less. (continue reading)

An excerpt and commentary on the “Postmodern American Gothic” flash-in-novel of Debra Di Blasi: DROUGHT. (continue reading)

The July issue of Foundling Review has some wonderful work from these gifted writers: Rebecca Coffey, Andrew Roe, Behlor Santi, John Middlebrook, and Rae Spencer. (continue reading)

When it comes to words, she’s a bookworm, brain, geek, nerd, poindexter, specialist, guru, and a bunch of other synonyms. And she has a major crush on Peter Mark Roget. And you will, too, after reading her article. (continue reading)

I think flash will always have such challenges attached to it, the challenge of compressed narrative and the challenge of narrative-alternatives. (continue reading)

Mary Tabor answers questions about her flash memoir, (RE) MAKING LOVE: A SEX AFTER SIXTY STORY. (continue reading)

Try using hyperbaton and other such devices to get your flashes to be even more flashy. (continue reading)

With her talent and wisdom, Kim Chinquee is able to dangerously flirt with both poetry and fiction, and create provocative art. Her newest book Pretty is no exception. (continue reading)

So that’s today’s flash focus. Imagine your character is “Master” and he/she runs into something that is “Bates.” (continue reading)

This entry was a response to the question, “How do you decide when you have an idea, if it is going to be flash length or longer?” from the AWP Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction Panel. (continue reading)

FlashFiction.Net concludes the unofficial Steve Almond month with a flash from his collection of mini-essays and short shorts—This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey. (continue reading)

Must a prose writer love the sentence the way a poet, say, loves the line? (continue reading)

In BUT THIS WON’T TAKE BUT A MINUTE, HONEY, Almond gives us essentially two chapbooks in one, a book of thirty flash fiction stories and a book of thirty essays on writing. I can imagine that one’s experience of the book could vary considerably depending simply on which side one reads first. (continue reading)

At the start of this year, I won an auction to support the literary journal Hunger Mountain that gave me the opportunity to send a manuscript to Steve Almond for critique. I sent him a flash piece I’d been working on—and what I got in return was some generous praise and suggestions. I recently emailed him and, being the all-around cool guy that he is, he gave me permission to reprint his comments and advice here. (continue reading)

I’ve long been a fan of Chuck Norris facts, a site devoted to telling the world about the unworldy bad-assness of Mr. Norris. Here’s a list of 9 facts I “borrowed” from their site, to help you embrace the fearless face of flash. (continue reading)

A listing of some recent first lines to inspire one’s own. (continue reading)

Flash will always be about a word count (usually under 1000 words), but that doesn’t quite answer the question, because not everything written under 1000 word would be considered flash fiction. Of course, its tininess defines it, but again, I think it’s the mindset of the writer, when faced with the challenge of tininess, that makes fiction flash. Below are nine (9) tiny things that answer “What is flash fiction?” from the perspective, not of the piece itself, but of its author. (continue reading)

Matt Bell’s How the Broken Lead the Blind seems deceptively simple at first, consisting of 55 pages, with only ten stories, of length ranging from a sparse page and a quarter to nearly seven pages in length. The ten stories, though, are carefully arranged, their trajectories minutely adjusted and sent to spin and crash together with a precision that would seem cold if it didn’t have beneath it a true concern for the human condition. (continue reading)

Rob Parnell’s article “Writing An Act of Magic” begins, “You have thoughts. You write them down as words. Later, others read them and your thoughts become theirs. Spooky, eh? I’m sure it was once, when the Druids roamed prehistoric Europe, exchanging information in the form of archaic symbols.” (continue reading)

That is the flash fiction question for today. If you go against expectation, how do you make it clear to readers that they are to read it differently, that you are aware of the expectation they bring to your piece and you are aware of how that expectation might lead them away from the “point” of your piece? (continue reading)

There’s a lot to love here in Meg’s comment, but I’m especially drawn to this comment: “Words like sneaker, wave, behind, and slide. These words are flexible—spontaneous, sly, and delicious if you allow them to be!” The flash fiction writer uses words for the seduction, more so perhaps than plotting, and they might be akin to Seinfeld’s special bedroom move, the clockwise swirl. (continue reading)

Now imagine “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing” as flash. Well, you don’t have to imagine it. I transformed it into flash below (continue reading)

Brandi Wells has writing forthcoming from McSweeney’s, Improbable Object, Apt, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Bust down the door and eat all the chickens. She has a chapbook forthcoming as part the chapbook collective Fox Force 5, which is being released by Paper Hero Press. She blogs at http://brandiwells.blogspot.com/ . (continue reading)

I’ve just finished reading Stefanie Freele’s Feeding Strays for the second time, and I’ve got hundreds of things to talk about, but what’s on my mind now is this: her beginnings astound me. (continue reading)

While reading The Underneath by Kathi Appelt I was struck not only by the incredible writing —one reason you should read her book—but as I read chapter after chapter, I began to realize each one was in of itself a piece of flash fiction. I had the great pleasure of interviewing her, and I asked her about The Underneath, her use of the short chapter structure, as well as a few other questions. (continue reading)

In reading a novel, I find myself picking out the essential words or images that lead to meaning, like the images of daisies, eggs, eyes, in-carnations in Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Or maybe it’s the men Dorothy finds in Oz I direct my attention to. She is surrounded by them, even Toto, all but the Witch and Glinda. In reading Kim Chinquee’s work, nothing can be ignored, and even the tiniest pattern, the tiniest deviation matters in large ways. (continue reading)

I found this essay written during my MFA. I think it was written at a time when I began to think of each sentence as its own story. That thought process came while reading Ian McEwan’s Saturday. Maybe it’s interesting. Maybe not. (continue reading)

If you are like me (and for your sake I hope that’s not the case), then you tire of the discussions about the lines that divide the prose poem and the flash, and you could, in the end, care less about why someone breaks lines or doesn’t, why singular paragraphs tend to be called prose poems, and the more paragraphs one creates, the more likely one is writing flash. All you know is that breaking your lines creates something not very good. (continue reading)

Yes, I continue the obsession with tragedy in this Tuesday’s Flash Focus, beginning with Louis Ruprecht’s neat summary of the two primary conflicts that emerge from Hegelian tragedy: (1) “the self comes into conflict with the social and political powers that be”; and (2) the individual comes into conflict with “Destiny, the gods, and the will of the world” (42). (continue reading)

Kathy Fish’s “Wren”—a featured story in FRiGG —utilizes the encounter between healthy and unhealthy to reveal truths about both such states of existence. (continue reading)

This fresh-out-of-the-shop feature of FlashFiction.Net asks a writer of a piece to interview one of its readers. Here, Joseph Young interviews Michael Kimball about his (short) short “Eleven.” (continue reading)

In short, the short short engages in its own tragic battle against the restrictions of form—of the requirements that demand closure, of the reader’s need for certainty and meaning. In the modernist world of Freud, one probed beneath the surface certain to find some submerged, deeper meaning; in the postmodern world, such a journey leads one to the realization that the world no longer has the power to provide such certainty and answers—and all we can do is figure out the right questions to ask. (continue reading)

In Victoria Redel’s Already the World (Kent State University Press, 1995), there are many wonders, this but one of them, “Talking Angel.” (continue reading)

I remember wanting to writing like Jeff Landon, realizing I never would quite get there, and that being okay, then realizing later it was a silly thing to want to write like, or be as good as, someone else, but that first desire to be like Jeff drove my first flash narratives into existence, to fly as Jeff did in that first Quick Fiction tale I came to again and again. (continue reading)