Tag Archives: Robert Shapard

Best Small Fictions Acceptances!

Big congratulations to Sara Hills and Emily Rinkema whose prize-winning flashfictions have been selected by the editors at Best Small Fictions! Sara’s story A Cock Among the Bathers won first prize and ‘Driving My Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit his Mother at Rehab‘ by Emily Rinkema, won second prize in our June Award last year. We always nominate our winners for Best Small Fictions and it is such a honour to have these two excellent stories chosen for the 2025 Best Small Ficitons anthology. Thank you very much to the team of editors and guest editor, the legendary Robert Shapard, whose article on short short fiction we quoted when BFFA first opened in 2015.
You can see the entire list of authors selected for the anthology and read more about Best Small Fictions here

The two selected stories, linked above, are also included in the delayed 2024 BFFA anthology The Constancy of Woodpigeons which is now at the printers and will be officially launched at the Flash Fiction Festival 18-20th July in Bristol. Sara Hills is on the festival team and will be reading her winning piece and several other winning and listed authors will be reading too.

The closing date for our 30th £1460 prize fund Award, judged by Marie Gethins is in just over two weeks on Sunday, 8th June. Results out at the end of June. We nominate stories at the end of the year when the different nomination opportunities are open again. Best wishes to all!

Jude, May 22nd, 2024

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Flash Fiction International
Very Short Stories from Around the World
Eds. James Thomas, Robert Shapard, Christopher Merrill
Reviewed by Santino Prinzi

Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015) pulls together flash fiction by writers from all over the globe; UK, US, Mexico, Iraq, Israel, Peru, New Zealand, Germany, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Brazil, India, and Ancient Rome are but only a handful of countries represented in this anthology. For avid readers of flash, there are many recognisable names, but there are new faces too. The stories in this anthology have also been selected from across time, demonstrating how flash wasn’t a product of the Internet as many claim it to be (though, of course, the Internet has certainly helped it flourish, but that’s a different discussion). Out of all of the flash fiction anthologies in this series from Norton, Flash Fiction International really is as flavoursome and engaging as it intends to be.
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