Flash Fiction Sunday Edition

This story is dripping in style and does an excellent job at creating an atmosphere. A great description of isolation.

Vivid and visual, this piece has a lot of great action and energy.

A great example of flash horror fiction! I enjoyed the tastefully written twist-ending.

Don’t be alarmed by the title. ‘New Moon’ is not a mormon vampire story. It’s a zombie story and happens to be excellent genre fiction.

This flash piece does a fantastic job of taking a normal, human experience (having a baby) and altering it in new and hauntingly unexpected ways.

‘An Egg’ demonstrates the power of flash as a viable form for historical fiction. Despite the ominous backdrop, this piece is a kaleidoscope for the senses. Read the author’s note for the extra punch.

I love this flash piece for its mix of absurd, intellectual comedy and lucid, moving moments of clarity. Unpredictability at the sentence level like this is pure delight.

The strength of this piece of flash (historical) fiction is its narrow, intimate focus. I love how integral the title is. Without the title hovering overhead, this story would read completely differently.

This flash fiction story aptly shows how voice and description can weave together to create an original and strange mood. The lasting image from the final moment of this humorously and disturbingly erotic scene is one that I’ll carry with me for awhile.

This flash piece is best described in the author’s own words: ‘There may be a difference between flash fiction and prose poems, but I believe the researchers still haven’t found the genes that differentiate them.’

What I love about this flash fiction piece is its lively and rebellious energy despite the dark and ominous setup. A story like this would make a perfect writing prompt.

Only in flash fiction can one get away with a story like this, capturing a vivid scene both internally and externally while effortlessly stringing the reader along until the very last sentence.

The details of this story are so precise and beautifully written, from the flowers to the stones to the unicorns, I love it all.

Deliciously funny! John Wiswell creates an outstanding first encounter with an alien species that involves eating ice cream.

A beautifully written, yet tragic story that I can’t get out of my head. If you own a dog and have kids, it’ll give you chills.

The disconnected-suicidal nature of the main character just pulls you in. Also, the writing flows and perfectly compliments the character’s thoughts.

This piece skillfully demonstrates how to movingly pull off writing about lost and/or unrequited love in only a couple hundred words . The narrator’s attention to sensory detail, coupled with his love for language itself, effectively plants this memory into the reader’s consciousness.

I love this flash piece for all its grounded, vivid detail of abstract, conceptual fears. Though I’m not generally interested in ghost stories or stories that involve demons, this snippet evokes the very real and mystifying power of grief.

Alice Walker is a literary giant whose writing and activism have influenced culture at some of the highest levels. I was delighted to happen upon a piece of short fiction by her, which, upon reading, artfully presents all the benchmarks of the more contemporary category that we now call flash fiction.

I just recently discovered the online flash fiction journal Apocrypha and Abstractions, which tends to publish flash fiction that is more obscure and surreal. This piece encompasses both the obscure and the surreal, throwing in just the right amount of humor for a memorable flash experience.

What I love about this story is the layering of convincing, detailed imagery, amidst obscure, surprising action and unexpected and original character development.

This piece works on multiple levels: It’s smart, humorous, disturbing, gross, and sad. It’s also refreshing to read a story about older characters whose sexuality, however dysfunctional in this case, isn’t outright dismissed or ignored.

Full of color, strangeness, and irony, this piece surprised me in the best ways.

This flash piece is an excellent example of how just the right amount narration, dialog, and action can perfectly blend together to display a complex and dynamic family portrait featuring multiple characters that are both present and absent