Touchstone – A Cancer Diary, 2014
Susmita Bhattacharya (First published in The University of Winchester Writers’ Festival – The Best of 2016) Writer’s Note: I wrote this essay […]
Two CNF Pieces: ‘Letters From Loved Ones’ and ‘Grasshoppers’
Caroline Bock Writer’s Note: These works were jumpstarted in an asynchronous workshop ‘Less is More’ run by Sarah Freligh, a master teacher […]
Double-Glaze
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Travelling to Ireland from France could sometimes cause culture shock. This piece started with my father’s reaction to […]
The Weight of Feathers
Lindz McLeod Writer’s Note: Near my home, there’s a high tunnel where pigeons nest; whenever I pass through it, I wondered whether […]
Small Town
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Small Town came from observations when visiting my old home town irregularly over the years, noting the changes, […]
Delete water, insert rubbish
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: Delete water was provoked by a very vivid memory of myself and a few student friends huddled over […]
Mr. Dupont and the Death of Romance
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: I set out to write a flash about a quiet teenager who seems more mature than her parents’ […]
White Feathers, Scarlet Heart
Sarah McPherson Pristine snowfall; the familiar made unfamiliar by winter. The early morning light touches each heap and hollow lightly. She is […]
Whelk
Frances Gapper Now it’s not safe to go out, they order bottles of guaranteed healthy air and crave injections of fresh young […]
Torque
Marie Little Jennifer carefully tightens the last tiny wingnut, a turn for a word: serendipity, coruscate, hullabaloo. The press is beginning to […]
Things Left Behind in an Oxfordshire Field in 1989 the Day After an Illegal Rave
Amanda Saint A pair of scuffed Kicker boots (size 5) —love-heart patterned socks tucked neatly inside, rainbow laces tied together to make […]
Special Victims
Colleen Kearney Rich Pam doesn’t plan to lie. It just slips out. Imagined life made real. The girl at work, her face […]
Snapshot
Peter Burns Sixth day standing at this bus stop staring across at him in the bookies, he comes out plunging his […]
Saints, Sinners, and the Dirt Track to Redemption
Kate Axeford Saints It started with the cows. Jacob saw them straight-lining it out of Hobson’s farm as if they sensed […]
On the Backroads
Jeanine Skowronski 1. We dig holes, because Wren insists there’s treasure buried in this dirt. We unearth silver slips of paper, two […]
Expressions of Joy
Nathan Xie He exclaims things like nodders, or yagoo, or hrmhrm, and the first time folks ask him what he means, […]
After She’d Gone
Cath Barton He was here the next morning, my brother. Sitting at my kitchen table, spooning marmalade onto his toast. […]
A Thing With Fur
Sherri Turner I have been waiting for you, Mr. Fox. I knew you would come when you were ready, that wild […]
The Only Constant is Change
Mary Byrne Writer’s Note: This flash piece was inspired by a very real woman who used to sit at my tram stop, […]
Night on Preston’s Bald
J. Dianne Dotson Writer’s Note: This story bounds ahead of a real-life terrifying encounter on a mountaintop in East Tennessee many years […]
Slaughterhouse of Love
Max Hipp Writer’s Note: I’d been thinking about how isolating love feels when it goes wrong and how marriages crack along childhood […]
Annie Is Sleeping
Sherri Turner Annie will wake in the morning later than usual. She will have a hangover that she doesn’t remember getting. […]
The Color Brown
Shipra Agarwal Writer’s Note: It’s been seventy-five years since the British Raj ended, but its remnants live on in sections of Indian […]
The Writer Tries to Address Her Origins
Deborah Zafer Writer’s Note: I am fascinated by the lost Jewish East End in London. My grandparents (and those of many British […]
A Climmer’s Chance
Christine Collinson Writer’s Note: I was listening to a podcast on birds through history when I first came across ‘Climmers’ (or Climbers). […]
Two Poems: Memories and Satsuma
Susmita Bhattacharya Writer’s Note: In 2016, I started a Facebook Group with a few of my friends who, like me, had just […]
Love, Departed
Emily Devane Writer’s Note: This piece started with a voice, and a feeling: I am looking for the key to the drawer […]
Truth or Death
Lori Sambol Brody Writer’s Note: I set out to write a flash novella about a high school theater kid (Julia) navigating her […]
Five Poems From A Wellness Check
Bri Gonzalez Writer’s Note: My collection-in-progress, currently titled A Wellness Check, inspects how pop culture, like DC’s Batman, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, […]
What We Leave Behind
Stephanie King Writer’s Note: This is part of a series I call “Monologues,” a loose collection of those really voicey flash pieces […]
Three Poems: Once We Were Kids, Moving Fear of Staying, Growl
Sage Ravenwood Writer’s Note: On writing these poems, ‘Once We Were Kids’ is based on an actual childhood memory. I wanted to […]
The Capris of Middle Age
Vicky Macdonald Harris No longer the resort capris of Laura Petrie dancing past her husband forever flat on the floor; she espousing […]
Music Lesson
Anthony D’Aries Don’t tell your four-year-old son how Marvin Gaye died. Unless you want to answer questions about fathers and guns and […]
The best vintages have a distinctive character
Eleonora Balsano Fresh blood is the colour of Pinot Noir, bright red and translucent. I’ve never said this to the […]
Covenant
Hattie Jean Hayes I finally dream of the cathedral. The air is stiff for a storm. I find you at the end […]
The Deaths
Ann Gelder At first there were three deaths: two big deaths and a small death. These deaths were well-mannered. They always […]
The Ocean’s Only Word (cont’d)
Lee Potts I worked for your mother one summer digging. Setting roots tangled up in soil from some other place into holes […]
However far she runs away from home
Rosie Garland My mother lives in a house full of gravestones. Every morning, she vacuums around their beds and washes their […]
Ferris Wheel
Ashley Espinoza My dad shows me an entire photo album of my mom pregnant with me. It’s weird, my dad has never […]
Driving at Night in the Rain with the AC Broken
Tyler James Russell You tell yourself you aren’t doing anything, not really, nothing strictly wrong. This is just how things are, and […]
Traffick for Miles
Tyler James Russell If you laid them out fingertip to fingertip like rows of paper dolls the girls would cover the lower […]
Grandmother’s Kitchen
Madeleine Pelletier Grandmother’s kitchen is a gathering place. Women turn their masks inside out, cluster round cooking pots, and offer prayers to […]
cathechism with stone & ghost
Evelynn Black the artist: the first person to set out a boundary stone, or make a mark –Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand […]
Lunch at café close to the water
Ailing Zhou She walks into a café by the lower end of the Hudson to check off a box the front is […]
Anderson Shelter
Edward Barnfield In the morning, there’s a hole where the house used to be. The kitchen, where we drank tea and talked […]
When I wished my name was Anna
Emma Lee As the others settle into the end-of-term going-through-the-motions of set exercises, I’m marked as different. The maths teacher tells me […]
Countess Herzinga’s Alchemy
Janna Miller Countess Herzinga was the first to study the transmutable properties of eggshells as applied to light and sound. Her […]
No Matter How Much Time Has Passed, Some Houses Don’t Die
Janna Miller Nazi ghost houses roam the countryside, setting up bars and brothels. Come in, come in, they say. You do not […]
Dinner Hour, Miami
Maeve Reilly We all have to eat Mr Buzzard we all have to twist sideways, eyes down, hovering to get the best […]
Homecoming
Anne Daly A turlough blooms each winter at the bottom of our road. It used to be my road, when I was […]