Issue 29

May 2023

Featuring new work by Christine H. Chen, Darlene Eliot, Annamaria Formichella, Elizabeth Fletcher, Robert Herbst, Sara Hills, Serena Jayne, Michelle Morouse, Audrey NIVEN, Kelly Pedro, Kathryn Silver-Hajo, Daniel Addercouth, Tom Vowler, Nan Wigington, Rena Willis, and Dan Crawley.

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What’s New?

On The Wind, It Swirls, Writing Process, and Characters Talking to Each Other: An Interview with Dan Crawley

Mar 14, 2023

Valerie Fox speaks with Dan Crawley, author of The Wind, It Swirls, and Blur, about figurative language, seeking connections, and joyful challenges.

Why You Might Not Have Placed That Brilliant Story (aka READ THE GUIDELINES)

Jan 11, 2023

Karen Jones — Early in 2022 I wrote a long Twitter thread of advice on submitting flash fiction. At the time, I had just finished reading 700 flashes submitted to various competitions and journals, so had made notes as I went along, picking out common pitfalls.

NFFR Best Small Fictions Nominations!

Dec 26, 2022

We are pleased to nominate the following works for Best Small Fictions 2023!

Lady Gaga Considers the Shrimp Scampi by Steve Almond

There were fifty thousand little monsters screaming for an encore, Spaniards, Germans, skinny little French boys, Italians making wet sounds with their tongues.

Little Red Riding Hood by Katerina Kishchynska

Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day, claws will tear out of her fingers.

The Girl In Purple by Bobbie Ann Mason

Near dawn, Dennis Moore saw the iron gate to the courtyard inch open and the wisp of a girl squeeze through, clanging the gate behind her. Two minutes later, on the boardwalk, she halted as if for an invisible dog, then resumed her dog-walker gait. He followed her...

Fun House by Robert Scotellaro

She’d gotten the fun house mirrors at an auction and had them put up in the spare bedroom.

Initiation by Stuart Dybek

The doors snap open on Addison, and the kid in dirty hightops and a sleeveless denim jacket that shows off a blue pitchfork tattooed on his bicep jogs forward beneath a backward baseball cap and grabs the purse off a babushka’s lap.