Online 8-week flash fiction course

I am delighted that I'm going to be teaching an 8-week online flash fiction writing course through the excellent London Lit Lab - it's open to both new and experienced writers, anywhere in the world. The course will start on July 23rd. Places are limited, and there are two subsidized places available. More details here - come flash with us!

Zoom online flash fiction workshop

How about a flash fiction online workshop to get the juices flowing? I'm running a 2-hour online flash fiction workshop for Arvon on May 28th, 11am - 1pm. It's open to all, no experience necessary, you'll end up with at least 3 new story drafts, so come and play! Booking details here:  https://www.arvon.org/writing-courses/courses-retreats/arvon-at-home-masterclass-flash-fiction/

3 writing workshops in June in the North

Come write with me, no previous writing experience necessary! I'm running three writing workshop in June:

June 1 A science-inspired flash workshop as part of the Northern Short Story Festival in Leeds. More details here.

June 8 A place-themed flash fiction workshop as part of the inaugural Victoria Baths Weekend of Words, in the Victoria Baths in Manchester. Details here.

June 23 A very special tour of Manchester's Southern Cemetery  & cross-genre writing workshop together with fabulous tour guide Emma Fox as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival. Details here.

Suffragette-themed writing workshop - coming to a location near you?

I ran a suffragette-themed flash fiction workshop for the fabulous Word Factory yesterday in the gorgeous Tara Theatre, culminating in a performance that night of the brand-new work the participants produced. I've never done anything quite like that before - and was very moved by the pieces produced by the 18 writers, which dealt with the present and the future as well as the past. I did a huge amount of research, and would love to run this workshop again - please do get in touch with me if you think you'd like me to run one near you! We can discuss fees & logistics, I am happy to customise it for different groups and different needs!

Crowdfunding for Arvon bursary

Going on an Arvon residential writing course can be a life-changing experience for both beginner and more experienced writers - I know this from personal experience! However, the costs (£720 -£770 per place) can be daunting, even with the grants that Arvon itself offers, so I am crowdfunding to offer up to four half-funded places for those who wouldn't consider applying or be able to apply - BAME writers, writers on low income, writers from other marginalised communities - on the 5-day residential Arvon Flash Fiction course I am co-tutoring with Nuala O'Connor in November 2018. Every pound helps, if you can spare it! I have raised almost 25% already in only a few days, which is amazing.

When I have raised the funds I will call for applications from writers who would like one of the places.  You can find out more about the course here.

National Flash Fiction Day 2014

Great excitement here in Bristol over National Flash Fiction Day 2014, this Saturday, June 21st! Here's what's happening, organised by Bristol Flash, do join if you can:

And the official NFFD anthology, Eat My Words, in which I am honoured to have a very short piece, is now out, the print version is available here, and get your copy of the ebook here. 

Happy National Flash Fiction Day!

National Flash Fiction Day June 22nd - Bristol and Beyond!

I wanted to let you know about a few things going on for this year's National Flash Fiction Day on Saturday June 22nd. First, to start with the question of what flash fiction is or might be, check out this wonderful article by Michelle Elvy in Awkword Papercut, with quotes from various writers, including me.

Then on to the day itself. Here in Bristol we have an afternoon of workshops (run by Yours Truly and by Calum Kerr, the brains behind NFFD!) and then an evening of readings by truly wonderful writers from Bristol, Oxford, Reading, Brighton and further! Here are the flyers:

Facebook workshop event page & Eventbrite event booking page

and

Facebook evening event page & Eventbrite Evening Booking page

If you simply can't make it to Bristol to join in the fun, then how about this, which you can join in with from the comfort of your blog?

FLASH MOB 2013 

The International Flash Fiction Day Blog Carnival and Competition

Deadline June 10th

 To enter, post a previously unpublished work of flash fiction (max 300 words, excluding title) on your own personal blog. Then: send the link to the story, the story text, a photo of yourself and a brief bio–all in the body of the email–to FLASH MOB 2013 (flashmobjune22@gmail.com) by June 10. 

See The Contest Rules for complete information on how to enter. There is no fee to enter the competition. 

 * The Judges 

The competition will be judged by an international panel that includes Robert Vaughan (USA), Leah McMenamin (New Zealand), Marcus Speh (Germany) and Nuala Ni Chonchúir (Ireland). See the Judges page for more. 

* The Organizers 

The organizers represent various points on the globe, and work across timezones and font styles to bring this flash mob event to you. Christopher Allen does all that he does from Munich, Germany but edits for the daily literary ezine Metazen, which is actually run from Canada. Linda Simoni-Wastila resides in greater Baltimore, Maryland where she writes, professes, mothers, and gives a damn, and in her spare time serves as Senior Fiction Editor of JMWW. Michelle Elvy comes to us from New Zealand as editor of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and Blue Five Notebook, though her latitude and longitude change daily these days.

So now there's no excuse for not flashing....!

Plymouth & Cork...

I'm not a very good blogger these days, I am sorry. If you take a look at the previous post you'll see what's keeping me busy - and there are other things i'm doing that aren't on the list too, a bit of a whirlwind time right now. But frankly, it's all writing-related, and it's ALL good! Last week I had the honour of having my own event at the brand-new Plymouth International Book Festival, in its first of what I hope will be many many years.... I chatted for about an hour, interspersed with reading some of the stories from MMWAUP, and I did worry that I was talking about myself too much. (A worry I have often). But the audience were just lovely, asked some great questions, and then came and chatted to me afterwards and bought books. It was great to talk to people, find out if they're writers, readers, what they're writing. It gives me such a boost, doing events like this, talking about the short story without anyone asking me to "defend" it, because I don't believe the short story needs defending...!

The next day I rushed straight off to Cork for the heavenly short story festival, my fourth time at the festival, a highlight of my calendar. This time, though, I was being worked very hard - teaching a 4-day flash fiction workshop, for three hours each morning, then reading from my new book, together with the wonderful and fellow flash-brained Nick Parker, author of The Exploding Boy and Other Tiny Tales (see left). Nick, my great mate Nuala Ni Chonchiur and I were then invited onto a panel entitled, somewhat controversially in our opinion, "Is Flash Fiction a True Literary Form or Just Something for Chancers" - luckily the large audience in Cork library seemed to agree with us that it didn't matter at all what a piece of writing is labelled as or how long or short it is. Phew!

I had the enormous honour of being the one to introduce and moderate the session with two new and instant favourite writers: the inimitable Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner, author of two collections (Better Living Through Plastic Explosives and All the Anxious Girls on Earth) and the excellent English author Sarah Hall, whose first collection (finally, after four award-winning novels!) is The Beautiful Indifference. I was nervous about introducing them properly, because at first glance you might superficially assign their stories to very different genres, labels... But their stories are unlabel-able both because they are unique and because they have a lot in common, despite very different styles. I hope I did them justice - go and read their books, their stories will slay you. I love being slayed by a short story.

And then... yes, there's more! Later that night, much later, I was the first to read at a brand new event for the Cork fest, the Flash Fiction Rapid Fire, where writers literally queued on the stage and read their tiny stories, 500 words max, in quick succession! I was extremely proud that 7 of my 10 workshoppers read that night, many of them for the first time ever. I felt quite parental!

The next day was our last workshop day, and then an afternoon of events including the sublime Lydia Davis, certainly proving that word length has no bearing on story substance ... and then the final day of the festival we listened, spellbound, to Frank O'Connor award-winner Nathan Englander reading one of his stories and talking so wisely and enthusiastically about writing. A real real treat and a worthy winner!

To get back to the workshop, I felt like I learned so much from spending 4 days talking, reading and writing flash fiction with my group. I experimented on them and they were so receptive, no-one refused to do anything, and I think we all had a lot of fun. We batted around thoughts of what flash fiction might be, then let go of the need for definitions and just got on and did it. A fantastic group, they shared their work, and it was all so great, I expect to see their names gracing the pages of lit mags and competition shortlists very soon. 

If you fancy trying your hand at some flash fiction for the reduced time commitment of only 2 hours (!), there are still some spaces left on my workshop at Mr B's Emporium in Bath on October 11th. Visit Writing Events Bath to book.

Nuala is a much better blogger than me, she deserves her shortlisting for the Blog Awards Ireland - she has a lengthy blog post about the festival, with pictures. Read all about it here! Also, the phenomenal lit magazine Five Dials has put together a special Cork-festival-themed issue with contributions from many of the authors who were there. It's so big it's been split into two! Read Part 1 here, with stories by Lydia Davis, Kevin Barry, Nuala, Joe Dunthorne and more - I have a new short story (over 2000 words long!) coming in Part 2.

A quick roundup

So, a brief roundup of a few things - I am interviewed over at the Negative Press blog about my new story, Switchgirls, which is to be included in their anthology, STILL (Sept 2012) inspired by the wonderful photographs of Roelof Bakker, alongside these amazing authors:

Richard Beard, Andrew Blackman, SJ Butler, Myriam Frey, SL Grey,  James Higgerson, Justin Hill, Nicholas Hogg, Ava Homa, Aamer Hussein, Nina Killham, Deborah Klaassen, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Claire Massey, Jan Van Mersbergen, Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende, James Miller, Mark Piggott, Mary Rechner, David Rose, Nicholas Royle, Preeta Samarasan, Jan Woolf, Evie Wyld and Xu Xi.

Launch event will be on Sept 26th at Foyles in London, more on that soon!

Flash fiction workshops:
There are still places left on the 4-day flash fiction workshop I am running at the excellent Cork International short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, Sept 19-23rd. It's going to be a wonderful workshop, looking at flash fiction from many different angles and writing many new pieces ourselves, do come and join us! Whether you want to write very short stories or longer works, the tools for writing flash fiction are incredibly useful. More information here.

If you are nearer to Bath than Cork, and have an evening rather than 4 days,  booking is now open for the flash fiction workshop I am running on October 11th, 6.30pm-8.30pm, at the fabulous Mr B's Emporium bookshop. Contact Writing Events Bath to secure your place.

That's all for the moment!

All about flash fiction

I think I may have written a blogpost with this title before but anyway it's still all about flash fiction because next Wednesday, may 16th, is the first ever National Flash Fiction Day! Brainchild of Calum Kerr, he has proven himself not just to be a person of endless creative ideas but also supremely organised and efficient in executing them and inspiring others. NFFD has gathered momentum worldwide, not just in its home country here in the UK.

So, what does it mean? Well, firstly, there is a National Flash Fiction Day anthology of brand new flash fiction, Jawbreakers, which includes stories by these lovely folk - and me!

Ali Smith, Jen Campbell, Dan Powell, Vanessa Gebbie , Amy Mackelden Laura Wilkinson David Gaffney  Brindley Hallam Dennis Rupan Malakin Tania Hershman Nathan Good  Rin Simpson Sarah Hilary Sara Crowley  Jenn Ashworth Bob Jacobs  Ian Rankin Benjamin Judge Mark Sheerin  Nigel McLoughlin Natalie Bowers Alex Thornber Valerie O'Riordan Carrie Etter L.A. Craig Calum Kerr Kylie Grant  Sal Page Jonathan Pinnock Susan F. Giles Martha Williams  Sarah-Clare Conlon  Eli Goldstone David R. Morgan Alison Wells SJI Holliday Nicholas Murray Eunice Yeates Nick Garrard Jay Barnett Kirsty Logan Kevlin Henney David Gilbert  Simon Thirsk  Sue Walker-Stokes Erinna Mettler Emma J.Lannie Jessica Patient  Brian George Trevor Byrne  Sally Zigmond Angela Readman Dan Carpenter Clare O'Brien  Alun Williams Jenny Adamthwaite Tim Stevenson Jason Bagshaw

You can pre-or your copy here, or pop to the official launch of NFFD next Wed in Southampton...

There is also a flash fiction anthology from here, Flash fiction south-west, which I am thrilled to also be included in, along with Sarah Hilary, Pauline Masurel, Martha Williams, Rin Simpson, Debs Rickard, Kevlin Henney and many others ...and the anthology is actually named after my flash, Kissing Frankenstein and Other Stories....

There are events up and down the country - and I'd like to invite you to the event I'm involved in, a flash fiction slam in Oxford organised by the inimitable Dan Holloway of eight cuts at the fabulous Albion beatnik bookstore. Kick off is at 6.30pm, free entry if you bring something to read! Come and entertain us with your flash fiction, or come to be entertained! I'll be reading something from my new book (did I mention I have a new book? :) ) and participating in the general merriment.

As if Calum wasn't busy enough - he's even launching a journal for NFFD entitled Flash Flood and wherever you are in the world, he wants your submissions of flash stories of 500 words or less! Find out more here. 

On the topic of flash, if you're wondering what it is and how to write it, come to Cork in September and join me for four days of flash writing workshops during the wonderful Cork International Short Story Festival (a slice of heaven for the short story junkie), Bath in October for a flash workshop at Mr B's Emporium for Writing Events Bath, or Devon in November for an Arvon Foundation 5 day course with me and Adam Marek in short and very short stories....

And on the topic of short stories, there are still some tickets left for Short Story Big Picture, the discussion in London on May 29th organised by Spread the Word, with an excellent panel including Di Spiers of BBC Radio 4, Ted Hodginkson from Granta, Helen Garnons-Williams from Bloomsbury, and me, talking about short stories. Should be fun! Come ask us some hard questions! (I will be reading a teeny fiction from my book there too.)

Cork Intl Short Story Festival Workshops

I am really excited about the 4 flash fiction workshops I will be running at this year's Cork International Short Story Festival in Sept in Cork, Ireland. Booking opened today, and what's on offer is, in my opinion, a really exciting range of workshops which, if I wasn't teaching one, I'd go on myself:

Short Stories for Beginners with Nuala Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Advanced Short Story Writing with  Éilís Ní Dhuibhne
Writing flash fiction - that's me!
Writing Contemporary Fairy Tales with Kate Bernheimer
Writing Short Stories For Young People with Siobhan  Parkinson and Kevin Healy
Story Onto Stage with Jack Healy
Story into Song with Jack Spillane

Download the workshops brochure or visit the website for more info. This festival is one of the greatest lit fests I have ever been to - a must for all short story lovers, writers, readers, fans of fabulous writing! It's such fun... the full programme - with writers from Canada, the US, the Phillipines and the UK - hasn't been released yet but I'm getting pretty excited about Lydia Davis, who is flying in from the US to do a reading. I'm such a fan of her often very very short stories  - you can read my review of her Collected Stories here. There's a bit of a flash fiction theme going on at the festival this year - there'll be a panel discussion provocatively entitled Is Flash Fiction a true Literary Art Form or just something for chancers? You can imagine how I might vote on that question!

The workshops have limited space so do book soon. If you're coming to flash with me, I look forward to meeting you!

Art & Science Flash Short Story Gym

There are still a couple of places left on this - book now and come flash with us!

Art & Science Flash Story Gym

Date: Saturday 21 April 2012

Time: 10.30am - 4.30pm

Venue: The Writers' Place, Jew Street, Brighton

with Vanessa Gebbie and special guest Tania Hershman

Learn the liberating process of flash fiction writing and add an invaluable tool to your writers’ toolkit, one that will enable you to boost your own creativity when you’re feeling uninspired, bust writers block, and create fresh voices.
Using her experience as a science journalist, and as writer-in-residence at Bristol University’s Science faculty, Tania Hershman will bring a sparklingly special scientific note to the days’ proceedings, which added to the somewhat unusual visual art Vanessa Gebbie has in store for you, will make this a fun-packed workshop with a difference – a unique programme to challenge and inspire!
Attend this workshop and you could walk away with a supply of new and original work in time to polish for the Brighton Festival Flash Slam on 19 May!
Vanessa Gebbie is author of two collections of short and flash fiction: Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning, and was contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (all from Salt Publishing). Her debut novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) was a Financial Times 2011 Book of the Year.  She teaches widely, writes poetry, has collaborated on a stage play and is a dreadful cook.

Tania Hershman’s second collection, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions, will be published in Spring 2012. Her first book, The White Road and Other Stories, was commended, 2009 Orange Award for New Writers, and her flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She is founder and editor of The Short Review, an online journal reviewing short story collections, and writer-in-residence in the Science Faculty at Bristol University. www.taniahershman.com

It's all flash!

Flash Fic News 1

So, I'm a little excited over here... I've just been asked to run not just one but a set of FOUR flash fiction workshops at one of my favourite festivals, the Cork International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, in September. This is a festival you want to sell anything to make sure you can go to - it's heaven for short story writers, and not just the events but the after-parties where writers mingle with readers and listeners are a huge part of the attraction. So, come flash with me... or just come and be there! (Booking's not open yet, I believe, but soon...)


Flash Fic News 2

I'm delighted to have been commissioned, along with a fairly fabulous roster of flash writers, to write a new piece for the National Flash Fiction Day anthology - and the anthology wants your stories too. Here are the guidelines:

Submission Guidelines:

We are looking for flash-fictions of between 150 and 500 words (not including the title) from UK writers only.

They can be in any style or genre but we want you to use only a single word for the title and this word should be the prompt for the piece or indicative of the story's theme.

You may submit a maximum of two pieces.

Stories should be emailed as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments. Please put your name, the title of the submission and your address (for proof of UK residence) into the body of the email.

Email your entries to nffdanthology AT gmail DOT com.

Stories should be previously un-published (except maybe on a blog for the purposes of workshopping) and no simultaneous submissions, please.

The deadline for submissions is 23.59 on Tuesday 10th April. Any submissions received after that time will not be considered.

If you are included in the anthology you will receive a free copy of the e-book edition plus a chance to buy a copy of the physical edition at a greatly reduced price.

Happy writing!

Flash...and more flash!

So, it was a week of good flash fiction-related news for me last week - a win at the Light Reading comp, semifinalist in another comp which hasn't declared yet, and then a shortlisting for the 2012 Unbound Press/Spilling Ink Holiday flash fiction Prize. My shortlisted flash story, Into the Waiting Arms of God, will be published in the prize anthology.

Huge congratulations to the winners and other shortlistees, especially Gail Aldwin, who tweeted me and Vanessa Gebbie to thank us, because she had taken part in the flash fiction workshops we ran in November as part of the Bridport Open Book festival. Most of the participants had not written flash fiction before, so Gail's shortlisting is really heartening, congratulations! And congratulations also to another of the workshop participants, Juliet West, whose flash story, Deep Hum, a draft of which was written during the workshop, has just been published on Ink, Sweat and Tears!

This leads me on to say that Vanessa and I will be running another flash fiction workshop for New Writing South in April, more details soon. But in the meantime, you have a chance to win copies of Vanessa's fabulous novel, The Coward's Tale, by entering the flash fiction competition on the Writers and Artists website. Here are the details:

To coincide with our recent interview with Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Coward’s Tale, we’re hosting a competition for you to showcase your literary skill.
We’re asking you to write up to 300 words (as a reference, not much longer than this page!) of flash fiction to be judged by Vanessa Gebbie. The best entries will win some very exciting prizes:

• First place winner will receive a signed copy of The Coward’s Tale in hardback, a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2012, and also have their work featured on our website.
• Second place winner will receive a signed copy of The Coward’s Tale in hardback and also have their work featured on our website.
• Highly Commended- two highly commended entries will also have their work featured on the website.

If you think you are up to the challenge, read Vanessa Gebbie’s flash fiction article for inspiration and submit your entry to writersandartists@bloomsbury.com by the 22^nd February 2012. Winners will be announced on the 7^th March – good luck!

Happy flashing!

Flashing at the Bridport Open Book Festival

I just spent four wonderful days in Bridport, a town near the Dorset coast, which may be small in size but is bursting with arts activities! I was honoured to be running two flash fiction workshops as part of the first Open Book festival with Vanessa Gebbie, and she has just done a great write-up of our time there on her blog, so good that I can't top it! Head over there to see what went on...

But just before you go - a big thank you to all those who came and wrote flash fiction with us, it was an honour writing with you. There seemed to be a kind of "religious" conversion taking place amongst a few who had never "flashed" before, and it was a joy to see - and hear - tiny stories by those who had never known that they could write such things. Such wonderful stories, too...!