News
Open Call: Prose Poetry Issue!

We are open for submissions for a prose poetry issue through December 1st! Send us your very best prose poetry, no more than 250 words for each poem, 3 poems in a single word document (750 words max per all 3). Please know that we can’t do special formatting with our...

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Dear Leo #6

Writing Your Inner Child Or how to see with “Salvador Dali Eyes” (an awesome story by Douglas Campbell that you’re going to wish you wrote yourself)by Leonora DesarSometimes (often) being an adult is lame. Not to mention writing about it. By writing from a kid or...

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Best Microfiction 2020 open for Submissions from Magazines

The 2nd anthology Best Microfiction 2020 will be published by Pelekinesis in the spring of 2020. The Best Microfiction anthology series considers stories of only 400 words or fewer. Co-edited by New Flash Fiction Review's Founding Editor Meg Pokrass, and Flannery...

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Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction

Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction   New Flash Fiction Review continues to honor master storyteller Anton Chekhov through holding an annual award for excellence in flash fiction— or as they might have said, back in Chekhov’s time, “very short fiction”. Anton...

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3 NFFR Stories Selected for Best Small Fictions 2019

We are thrilled to announce that THREE stories from New Flash Fiction Review were selected for inclusion in Best Small Fiction 2019! Stories are "Shopgirl" by Dionne Irving Bremyer, "How Not to Become an Expat" by Kara Vernor, and "Insurance"by Elaine Chiew!...

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Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction

2020 Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction New Flash Fiction Review continues to honor master storyteller Anton Chekhov through holding an annual award for excellence in flash fiction. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who...

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2018 Pushcart Prize Nominations

Congratulations to our 2018 Pushcart Prize nominees! You can read the nominated stories below: Raki Kopernik, Homely Jaqueline Doyle, Pretty Girl AE Weisgerber, Sweet Violets Salvatore Difalco, Three Days Paul Crenshaw, “Fuck Zeus,” Ms. Lynne Said in Fourth Period...

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Anton Chekhov Prize 2018 Longlist is in!

Congratulations to all the authors who made the long list, and huge thanks to all who entered our first contest! Anastasia, My Broken Bird Auf Liebe Eingestellt Beneath the Pond Charred Cistern Hunger I Am Fluent In Spine Joe D. Takes Measure Kessler keeps his clothes...

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MicroWriMo Prompts by Meg Pokrass

PROMPTS ARE HERE! November 1st November 2nd November 3rd NFFR's Founding Editor/Managing Editor, Meg Pokrass, will be offering flash fiction prompts everyday in November. The prompts will be based on her stories from ALLIGATORS AT NIGHT, her new collection, available...

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Best Small Fictions, 2019 – Our Nominations

BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2019 NOMINATIONS: Everything, then Silence by Justin Hermann How Not to Become an Expat by Kara Vernor The Difference between Alligators and Crocodiles by Cathy Ulrich Two Girls Contemplate What Gorillas Do at Night by Angela Readman Anatomy of a...

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Anton Chekhov Prize 2018

Winners, Finalists, and Honourable Mentions Judge Nuala O’Connor’s results for the Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction 2018 have come in. The stories were read blind, so it is very exciting to unveil the names of the winners, finalists, and honourable mentions!...

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Instruction Manuals for Writing Flash by Georgia Bellas

In the garden of flash: Three mini faux instruction manuals Pay attention to the weeds What’s growing inside you? What will you cultivate? Weeds push through cracks and take over. Look at them. Study them. Why uproot something that is flourishing? A weed by definition...

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Notes from the Slush Pile by Al Kratz

Beginnings   I’d like to share some ideas on beginnings that occurred to me after a recent run through the slush pile. REM wrote a great song called Begin the Begin on their album, Life’s Rich Pageant. It started: Birdie in the hand for life’s rich demand. A...

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Ernst Is Coming Home by Jack Morris

The rumours arrive on the dawn wind and by mid-afternoon the village ladies have landed in Leonora’s kitchen to disembowel the news.

Prudence by Christy Stillwell

They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.

After by Claudia Monpere

and after and after and nothing changes, just the names of the children. This one drew birds wearing hats. That one had an orange juice popsicle for an imaginary friend.

Husband by Sara Cappell Thomason

I want a house, a wife, a steak dinner and all my bills paid on time. I want to settle down in a house and get paid. Dinner from my wife served on time

The Truths Behind a Pumpjack Dare, Northern Alberta, 3rd July, 1991 by Kate Axeford

I’d hauled myself skywards on steep metal rungs. You were safe below, hurling taunts like stones. We’re two brothers, poles apart, but I’d climbed the ladder. I’d had to. You’d dared me to rodeo the Donkey.