Issue 35 will feature the winners of the NFFR 2024 Flash Fiction Contest. Submissions will be open from September 15, 2024 to October 15, 2024.

Nathan Leslie will be this year’s judge. The winning writer will receive 250 dollars and two honorable mention writers will be awarded 100 dollars.

We welcome submissions of flash stories up to 500 words in length. Our usual non-contest guidelines apply. To enter, there is a 10 dollar fee. Ours is an all volunteer staff and we use the funds to help us produce NFFR (web hosting especially). We are very grateful to all who enter.

On Nathan Leslie: Leslie’s eleven books of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs and Drivers, among others. His latest books are The Invisible Hand (Hamilton Stone Editions) and the forthcoming A Fly in the Ointment (Apprentice House). He is also the author of The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, a novel, and the poetry collection Night Sweat. His work has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines, including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Leslie was series editor for Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books) and edited fiction for Pedestal Magazine for many years. He currently serves as the series editor for Best Small Fictions and edits Maryland Literary Review, which he founded.

As editors always say, read the magazine for a sense of what we like. We value your trust in sending us your work. We’ll strive to send our replies within two weeks of the submission deadline. Here are our general guidelines:

• We invite you to submit one story.
• The maximum word count is 500 words.
• We don’t accept previously published material.
• Submissions only via Submittable.
• Simultaneous submits are cool, just do us the courtesy to withdraw it if needed.
• Please note all of our readings are anonymous, so please do not have any author information in your document, including as the file name, or we will have to reject it in fairness to the others and the principle of reading anonymously. 

As usual, include a cover letter including a brief bio. Also, include an originality pledge in your letter that affirms that your work is your own and that AI was not used in its creation.

And do read recent issues of NFFR to give you a sense of what we love.