Here are five tips on great flash begin­nings

An inter­view with Car­ol Guess: “I try hard to remind myself that my strug­gle is per­son­al, and that I’m pri­mar­i­ly com­pet­ing with myself.”

An inter­view with flash fic­tion writer Guy Hogan.

[Editor’s Note: We are grate­ful to Lee Martin’s arti­cle “Stu­art Dybek’s ‘Sun­day at the Zoo’: A Class in Nar­ra­tive Struc­ture,” an arti­cle that served as our own mod­el for the struc­ture of the nar­ra­tive analy­sis essay of short short fic­tion.]   Min­ing extra­or­di­nary flash fic­tion from the ordi­nary and mun­dane of life sounds con­tra­dic­to­ry, but […]

While Moth­er lay in the hos­pi­tal dying, my aunts gath­ered in our dirty kitchen and brewed tea, cried and laughed togeth­er.

It was after the raid on Tokyo. We chil­dren were told to col­lect scraps of cloth. 

Some­times it’s the small stuff that makes the sto­ry note­wor­thy. The small stuff? What we name our char­ac­ters, how we han­dle details with­in the sto­ry, and in what way we add tex­ture cou­pled with the afore­men­tioned big con­cepts is the stuff of good flash.

Always try to bring some­thing new or unex­pect­ed to the sto­ry. That takes dig­ging. Be pre­pared to dig a lit­tle.

She asked how seag­ulls rec­og­nize each oth­er, how they know friends from strangers. 

The piece imme­di­ate­ly inter­est­ed the read­er with this super­nat­ur­al ele­ment of a hymn ema­nat­ing from a Pol­ish king’s sar­coph­a­gus.