Flash Magic: Conjuring Beauty & Originality
Three Hour Pre Festival workshop 2.00-5.00 pm Friday 18th July

(Note:This workshop is separate from the main weekend package.

I’m often told by students of my workshops that I’m a “magician,” because somehow, I have drawn powerful, resonant writing from them they never thought they were capable of. Flattering as that is, it’s simply not the case! Although I do have a pretty nifty bag of tricks, the REAL magic comes from the writers themselves. Amazing things happen when we learn to trust ourselves and just…play. How to spin words into gold? In this three-hour session, we’ll write to tried and true prompts that have sparked scores of published and award-winning flash over the past decade. We’ll also read and draw inspiration from the very best examples of the form. Expect to come away with several dazzling drafts only you could write.

Play it By Ear: Writing Flash That Sings: with Kathy Fish

This 90 min session will run on both Saturday and Sunday

In this immersive, generative workshop, we will explore the often-overlooked musicality of flash fiction. Writing is not just about ideas and plot—it’s about the sound and cadence that bring those ideas to life. The rhythm of your words can transform a simple story into an evocative experience and provide your reader with a deeper “felt experience.” Through a series of engaging exercises, we’ll tune into the soundscapes of language, learning how to shape sentences that hum, pulse, and resonate. You’ll discover how sentence length, punctuation, repetition, and word choice can all play roles in creating a musical flow, heightening and enhancing your story’s emotional resonance. .

a href=”https://www.kathy-fish.com/” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Kathy Fish ]]
Kathy Fish’s stories have been widely published in journals, anthologies, and textbooks. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Guernica, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Denver Quarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, the Norton Reader, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America (2023). She has been honored with a Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize and multiple appearances in both the Wigleaf Top 50 and the Best Small Fictions series. The author of five short fiction collections, Fish teaches a variety of writing workshops online. She also publishes a bestselling craft newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, which was recently named one of the 20 Best Creative Writing Substacks by Writers at Work. Her writing has been generously supported by fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Kerouac Project.

Revolutionary Creativity: The Sustainable Artist’s Life as an Act of Resistance: with Nancy Stohlman

Spoiler alert: The hustle is killing your creativity.

Creative Burnout is real, and it happens to all of us. We make art in a culture that profits from our burnout, monetizes our attention, and values us more as consumers than creators or even citizens. Cultivating a sustainable creative life in a culture that worships productivity is an act of resistance. This think-tank style workshop is an invitation to put on your own oxygen mask first: we will invite the elephant in the room to be named, we will embolden ourselves with a clear-seeing of the true stakes, and we will unpack our vital, critical, and changing role as artistic visionaries. We’ll discuss and apply the Five Pillars of Burnout Recovery, and through the process of radical self-care, a sense of creative collaboration and belonging, and an honest reconnection to wonder and awe, you will better understand the ground zero of your own creative quicksand and find the breakthrough you need to return to your work refreshed, renewed, recommitted, and writing with joy again.

Performance Masterclass: Befriending the Stage and Delivering Your Work with Confidence

With increasing opportunities to perform your work in other mediums such as Reels, Youtube, podcasts, Zoom readings and yes, even live readings, understanding the skill of performance can help you successfully take your work from the page to the stage. As an audience member, you know when a piece of work really comes alive at a reading. But how do they do it? Back by popular demand, this workshop will be a hands-on performance masterclass with live feedback for the first 12 participants (more is possible). We will learn by doing: practicing, risking, and even failing in real time while in a safe and supportive environment. You will learn both by performing your own work and supporting others as part of our mock audience. We might even try a little performance art! Bring a short piece of work and your playful, curious, courageous selves

Nancy Stohlman is the author of six books including After the Rapture (2023), Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (2020), Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (2018), The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014). Her books have been honored in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, The Foreword Indies, The International Book Awards, Reader Views Book Awards, and the Colorado Book Awards. Her stories have been anthologized widely, appearing in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and The Best Small Fictions, as well as adapted for both stage and screen. She teaches and holds workshops and retreats around the world. 

Precious Jewels: with Jude Higgins

The last line of the last story of Jude’s collection Clearly Defined Clouds is ‘If you join all chinks of hope together, you make a necklace that can’t be broken’.In this generative workshop, Jude will offer suggestions for you to draft sparkling stories of different genres, prompted by items of jewellery, precious to you or others.

Jude Higgins creates the programmes for, and directs both the online and in person Flash Fiction Festivals UK. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015, has co-run The Bath Short Story Award since 2013 and directs the short-short fiction press, Ad Hoc fiction. Her flash fiction has won or been placed in many awards and she is widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her flash fiction chapbook ‘The Chemist’s House’ was published in 2017 by V. Press and her flashfiction collection Clearly Defined Clouds was published in July, 2024.

Workshop on Prose Poetry: with Carrie Etter

Details coming soon

American expatriate Carrie Etter has published four collections of poetry, including The Tethers (Seren, 2009), winner of the London New Poetry Prize, and Imagined Sons (Seren, 2014), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Grief’s Alphabet, her new collection was published by Seren in April 2024. She also edited Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearsman, 2010), a TLS Book of the Year, and Linda Lamus’s posthumous collection, A Crater the Size of Calcutta (Mulfran, 2015). Individual poems have appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Poetry Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. She also writes short stories, essays, and reviews, and has received grants from Arts Council England and The Society of Authors. After many years teaching at Bath Spa University, in 2022 Etter joined the creative writing faculty at the University of Bristol.

Workshopping – The Giving and Taking of Feedback: with Christopher Allen

Suitable for all writers.

Handing your work to another person for feedback can be a heart-on-sleeve moment, especially if the person doesn’t know you or your writing. In this 90-minute session we’ll (re)learn and practice the most effective ways of giving and receiving feedback in a workshop situation as well as throughout the editorial process.

Christopher Allen is publisher and editor-in-chief of SmokeLong Quarterly as well as the creator of SmokeLong Fitness, the community workshop of SmokeLong. Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins and the satire Conversation with S. Teri O’Type. His work has appeared in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and many other fine places. He has been a teacher and workshop leader for over 30 years.

At the flash fiction festival, along with estival team member, Helen Rye, Christopher also hosts the karaoke entertainment in the bar on Friday and Saturday evenings.

The Stories In Your Phone – how our smartphones can be the perfect ally for flash fiction inspiration: with K. M. Elkes

Details coming soon

K.M. Elkes is the author of the short fiction collection All That Is Between Us, which was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award in 2020. His flash fiction has won or been placed in various competitions, including Bath Flash Fiction Award, Reflex Fiction Prize, Fish Publishing Flash Prize and the Bridport Prize. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfictions nominee. He has also been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and individual short stories have been successful in international writing competitions including the Manchester Fiction Prize, Bridport Prize and the Royal Society of Literature VS Pritchett Prize. His work has appeared in numerous literary anthologies and journals, and has featured on school curricula in the USA, India and Hong Kong. He is a short story tutor and runs his own writing workshops and courses online. He has guest-lectured at Bath Spa University and Sheffield Hallam University, where his book has featured on the MA Creative Writing course module. KM Elkes is a writer from a rural working class background, and his work often reflects themes around transience, isolation and family trauma.

The Female Gothic in Flash Fiction: with Susmita Bhattacharya

In the Female Gothic, women can explore and adventure within the home in the same way male heroes were represented exploring and adventuring far from the home. In this same vein, the central figures of the Female Gothic are women who are at once heroines and victims.They are threatened, usually by a patriarchal figure or thing, but still manage to be brave to confront and survive the threat. Whereas unreal or supernatural things are expected to be accepted as real in Gothic novels, in the Female Gothic the questions are answered at the end and the reader is left with a logical explanation.- Moers, Ellen. “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother.” The New York Review, 21 Mar. 1974.

This workshop will take us on a journey of discovery and exploration through prompts and readings to write The Female Gothic in flash form.

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian writer living in Winchester, UK. The Normal State of Mind (Parthian) was longlisted at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2018. Her short story collection, Table Manners (Dahlia Publishing) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She is co-founder of the ACE-funded ‘Write Beyond Borders Mentoring Programme’ and ‘Bridges not Borders’ project. She is a multidisciplinary artist who does several projects in schools and the community in the Solent region and has co-edited Flash Fusion: An Anthology of Flash Fiction & Conversations on Craft by South Asian Writers.
BlueSky: Susmitab.bsky.social Instagram: Susmita_b_writer

Unlock Your Fairy Tale Toolkit: with Judy Darley

A workshop where ancient story motifs offer the chance to shine new light on modern day darkness.
Fairytales originated thousands of years ago and many don’t involve fairies at all. Instead they often feature a protagonist with a problem to obstacle to overcome, and, usually, an element of magic that either helps or hinders. They offer the chance to explore the darkness in every life and allow us a space in which to reconsider the familiar. Fairy tales can even equip us to make some kind of sense of an inexplicable world. Discover how you can utilise the ‘fairy tale toolkit’ in your own writing.

Judy Darley is a flash fiction writer, journalist and occasional poet living on the North Somerset coast. Her fiction has been described as ‘shimmeringly strange’, possibly because she can’t stop writing about the fallibilities of the human mind and often uses fairy tale tropes to do so. Her words have been published and performed on BBC radio and harbour walls, as well as in bookshops, museums, cafés, caves, pubs, a disused church and an artist’s studio. Judy is the author of three fiction collections: The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Find Judy at http://www.skylightrain.com; https://bsky.app/profile/judydarley.bsky.social

The personal is political: finding relevance and resonance in our everyday lives: with Shelley Roche-Jacques

‘The personal is political’ is a feminist slogan and a powerful idea tied to the civil rights movement and student activism. It shines a light on how personal experiences connect to bigger social and historical forces, challenging norms and pushing back against the status quo.
In this workshop, we’ll explore how our own experieRisk the Piernces — no matter how everyday or seemingly small — can inspire writing that makes bold and important statements. We’ll read and talk about short, subtly political pieces, then use them as inspiration to craft our own surreptitiously powerful stories.

Shelley Roche-Jacques a writer, teacher and researcher of short fiction and poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals such as Litro, Brevity, Flash: the International short-short story magazine, and The Boston Review. Her collections Ripening Dark and Risk the Pier are comprised of poems in the form of dramatic monologue. Her short fiction has been highly commended in the Bridport Prize and shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and Fish Prize.

Art & Flash: with Anika Carpenter

Art has been inspiring writers for thousands of years, from Homer to Keats, Max Porter to Donna Tartt, powerful imagery has conjured great writing. But what of the people behind these images, the artists creating work in response to the life and times they were born into. What place might their aims and experiences have in ekphrastic writing?

In this workshop we’ll look at the motivations, motifs and techniques of one contemporary artist, and explore how art appreciation can conjure exciting and unexpected stories. There will be three featured artworks each with optional prompts.

Anika Carpenter is a flash fiction author and artist based in Brighton, UK. You can find her stories in Gooseberry Pie, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, The Disappointed Housewife and others.
Anika holds a first-class master’s degree in fine art and has worked for some of the UK’s best-known artists. You kind find details of her monthly online ekphrastic workshops via her website.
Website: www.anikacarpenter.com BlueSky: @stillsquirrel.bsky.social

Packing an Emotional Punch: with Finnian Burnett

Flash fiction can pack an intense emotional punch in the briefest of spaces. In this workshop, we’ll explore techniques for crafting emotionally compelling characters, creating vivid imagery, and building resonant themes—all of which are designed to give your readers all the feels. In this generative writing workshop, participants will explore how to dig into personal experiences to craft authentic, impactful stories. Whether you’re aiming to make your readers laugh, cry, or reflect, you’ll discover how to make every word count and leave a lasting impression in just a few hundred words

Finnian Burnett lives in a small town in British Columbia where they write at the intersections of identity—mental health, gender identity, body positivity, and queer joy. They are a 2023 recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant, a 2023 CBC non-fiction finalist, and a 2024 Pushcart Nominee. Finnian’s novella-in-flash, The Clothes Make the Man, shortlisted in the Bath novella-in-flash award and was published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Their second flash collection, The Price of Cookies, was published through Off Topic Publishing. Finnian has recently signed an agent for their epistolary novel about a trans man coming to terms with the death of his mother, and another agent for their collaborative series of queer Shakespeare re-imaginings. They are a frequent presenter, teacher, and keynote speaker at literary and teaching conferences.

Workshop with Ingrid Jendzrejewski

Ingrid Jendrzejewski is a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief of FlashBack Fiction, and a flash editor at JMWW, and has served as both non-fiction editor and editor-in-chief of the Evansville Review. She has published over 100 shortform pieces and has won multiple flash fiction competitions, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for BFFA’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Vestal Review’s VERA Award, and multiple times for Best Small Fictions.

Ingrid, along with co director of National flash Fiction Day, Diane Simmons and NFFD anthology editor, Karen Jones is also facilitating a discussion and story reading session of themed stories from the 2024 NFFD anthology.

Seasons: A Celebration of the 2025 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology


A Chat with NFFD Anthology Editors & Readings from our 2024 anthology 

Grab a drink and join us in the bar for a celebration of our latest anthology. NFFD’s own Diane Simmons will host a brief chat with NFFD anthology editor Karen Jones and previous anthology editor and Co-Director Ingrid Jendrzejewski. We’ll also hear some of this year’s authors read their anthology flashes and micros, and Ingrid will also be on hand to run a mini-competition for those who want a shot at some mildly fabulous prizes…
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Diane Simmons is Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day, UK. She has been widely published in magazines such as New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Splonk and FlashBack Fiction and placed in numerous writing competitions. Finding a Way, her flash collection on the theme of grief, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2019 and shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards in the Best Short Story Collection category. Her historical novella-in-flash An Inheritance was published by V. Press in 2020 and shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards Best Novella category. Her novella-in-flash, set in 1970s Scotland, A Tricky Dance was published by Alien Buddha Press in January 2024 and her novella ‘William Pritchard & Sons’ by Arroyo Seco Press in September 2024 You can read more about Diane on her website www.dianesimmons.co.uk and connect with her on X @scooterwriter

Karen Jones is a flash and short fiction writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story ‘Small Mercies’ was included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and second prize in Fractured Lit’s Micro Fiction Competition. Her work has been Highly Commended/shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction and Bath Short Story Award and many more. Her novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction and her ekphrastic novella in flash, Burn it All Down by Arroyo Seco Press

Creative Visualisation Session: with Karen Jones

More details coming soon.

Putting together a flash fiction collection: is there ever a right time? with Kathryn Aldridge Morris

When is the best time to collate your flash fiction into a collection and put it out into the world? What less obvious things do writers take into account when deciding whether to publish their work as a chapbook, mini or full collection? What are potential pitfalls? In this workshop, we’ll discuss these questions as well as diving into the history of the chapbook as a way of unpicking our own motives for publishing. I’ll share my own process of putting out a debut collection, as well as insights from other flash fiction writers at different stages of their writing career.

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is a writer from Bristol, UK. She has won The Forge prize for Nonfiction and the QuietManDave prize, and is published in a variety of journals and anthologies including the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, Fuel Anthology and the Wigleaf Top 50. She has a postgraduate certificate in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and runs creative writing and writing for wellbeing courses in the community.

Under the microscope: The joys of writing very short stories: hosted by Sharon Telfer with Sara Hills, Marie Gethins and James Montgomery

Creating a fully realised flash in only 100 words feels daunting. But ‘micros’ are very rewarding to write – and punch well above their weight to read. This panel discussion will explore the many writing tools you have at your disposal, talk about how to embrace the particular pressures of ‘short-short’ stories, tease out what makes a micro shine, and highlight common pitfalls to look out for. With favourite readings, plenty of practical tips, time for questions, and exercises to take away, you’ll leave inspired to give this stretching form a go and with ideas to deepen your general writing practice.

Sharon Telfer discovered flash fiction writing for the then weekly AdHocFiction micro competition in 2016. Her stories have since won prizes including the Bath Flash Fiction Award (twice) and the Reflex Flash Fiction Prize, and been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. Her flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published by Reflex Press and was longlisted for the 2022 Edgehill Short Story Prize. She has been a judge for the National Flash Fiction Day and FlashBack Fiction 100-word micro competitions.

Marie Geth­ins featured in Winter Papers, Bristol Short Story Award, Australian Book Review, NFFD Anthologies, Banshee, Fictive Dream, Pure Slush, Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies, and others. Selected for Best Microfictions, BIFFY50, Best Small Fictions, she edits for flash ezine Splonk, critiques for Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. She has won or been placed in many Awards including Reflex Fiction, TSS, The Bristol Short Story Prize, Bath Short Story Award. Flash Fiction Festival Online. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won or placed in the Smokelong Mikey, 2023, QuietManDave Prize for flash nonfiction, the Retreat West quarterly prize, National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and The Welkin Prize. Sara’s work has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, and the BIFFY 50, as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net.

James Montgomery writes from Staffordshire in the UK. He has won the Pokrass Prize, Retreat West’s best micro fiction prize and a Flash Fiction Festival competition, placed second in New Zealand’s international Micro Madness contest, and been highly commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Award and National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition. His stories have been published in various anthologies and literary magazines, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. Find him at www.jamesmontgomerywrites.com.

“Flashes about Nature: with John Brantingham

In this workshop, we’ll discuss how to write meaningfully about our relationship with and place in the natural world. Participants will leave with at least one piece begun.

John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. He is the editor of The Journal of Radical Wonder.

A Sense of Wonder: with Dave Swann

As a tutor, I’ve witnessed a damaging increase in anxiety amongst young people in recent years, and have started to see wonder as an antidote to the angst that can harm a writer’s confidence. In its origins as a word, ‘anxiety’ was linked to ‘constriction’ and ‘narrowing’ – so it’s little wonder that the condition can close down a writer’s sense of imaginative freedom. In this session (which will include writing exercises and analysis of my own novella Season of Bright Sorrow and the marvellous Jim Heynen flash ‘What Happened During the Ice Storm’), I want to show how the experience of wonder has helped me through tricky moments in my writing life – and to suggest ways in which writers can go beyond themselves, to enrich their flash fiction with unexpected elements. I’m hoping to have some fun, too – if one thing inspires wonder in me, it’s humanity’s continuing ability to find humour and light in the darkest, narrowest places!

David Swann’s Season of Bright Sorrow (Ad Hoc Fiction) won the 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Competition, and was named Rubery Book of the Year in 2023. Another novella, The Twisted Wheel, finished runner-up in the 2022 Bath competition. His stories and poems have won many awards (including eleven at The Bridport Prize and two in the National Poetry Competition). His collection The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010), about his residency in a prison, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize. After many years as a university lecturer, Dave now works at Cumbria University as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and is busy with a commission from the National Literacy Trust to write a community poem for his beloved Blackburn Rovers!

Workshop with Michael Loveday

Michael Loveday began writing fiction and poetry in 2001, and was the editor and publisher of the poetry journal 14 magazine from 2005 to 2012. He Said/She Said, his debut poetry pamphlet, was published by HappenStance Press in 2011. His first full work of fiction (the hybrid novella-in-flash Three Men on the Edge, V.Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Best Novella Award. His craft guide to the novella-in-flash form, Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022) has won several international awards including a Best Indie Book Award and the 2024 Independent Press Award for Writing and Publishing. His fourth publication, Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood, was published in November 2022 by Bamboo Dart Press. He teaches flash fiction as a Visiting Lecturer at Bath Spa University, is a freelance coach for creative practitioners, and mentors writers to develop novellas-in-flash. More at: https://michaelloveday.com/

Strategies for Success in the Novella in Flash: a panel hosted by Michael Loveday

Michael is also facilitating this panel with David Swann (bio above) whose novella-in-flash Season of Bright Sorrow won the Rubery Book of The Year Award, Deborah Tomkins whose novella-in-flash Aerth won the inagural Weather Glass Book Awards and Laura Besley who runs a reading group to discuss Novellas in Flash

Laura Besley (she/her) is the author of (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred – shortlisted for the Sabateur Awards – and The Almost Mothers. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and in 2023 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant to work on her first full-length collection of short stories. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and runs The NIFTY Book Club, which meets monthly to discuss novellas-in-flash. Find out more & discover more of her writing on her website: laurabesley.com

The Rhythm Method with Vanessa Gebbie

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What tools are out there to help us write memorable prose for our flashes? What tricks and strategies have writers employed for a long time, which sometimes get forgotten? Following on from Jo Gatford’s brilliant Shakespeare flash workshop last summer, let’s meet as many ways as we can to add hidden strength to our writing. Can we employ some of the same strategies when we consider sequences, even collections? Does our writing process benefit from considering rhythms in a broader sense? So much to explore, so little time!

Vanessa will also offer The Biggest Game of Word Cricket in the Whole Wide World
Our traditional Saturday morning half-hour warm-up session for the whole assembly in the dining room.

Vanessa Gebbie has won multiple awards for both prose and poetry, including a Bridport Prize and the Troubadour. Her flash publications include Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures (Liquorice Fish Books) and the weird/irreal collection Nothing to Worry About (Flash: The International Short Short Story Press at Chester University) 2018 as well as many individual publications online and in print. She is author of three short story collections (with Salt and Cultured Llama), a novel (Bloomsbury), and two poetry publications (Pighog and Cultured Llama). She is also commissioning and contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). She teaches widely.

The Dark Side: with Stephanie Carty

Flash with some degree of darkness is popular and enticing – we’ll discuss the how and why. We will consider the psychology of those characters who bring dark characteristics to your flashes (e.g. narcissism, schadenfreude), the layers and meaning in darker themes (e.g. vengeance, tragedy), how and why flash can be the ideal form for this, and consider what the function and purpose is for both writers and readers.

Stephanie Carty is a writer and clinical psychologist in the UK. Her short fiction is widely published and placed in competitions. Her novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone won a Saboteur Award and her short fiction collection The Peculiarities of Yearning won an Eyelands Book Award. Her novella in flash Spin of the Triangle was a runner-up in the 2025 Bath Novella in Flash Award and will be published by Ad Hoc Fction this year. She has published two psychological suspense novels and two writers’ guides – Inside Fictional Minds on the psychology of character and The Writing Mirror on analysing your writing to better understand yourself. stephaniecarty.bsky.social.

Transforming Tales: Hybrid forms and structures in flash fiction: with Farhana Khalique

What do cronuts, cockapoos, and cover versions have in common? Hint: they all involve some kind of transformation or hybridity! In this workshop, we’ll explore using transformation and hybridity in flash fiction. We’ll look at how to find inspiration in unusual places and different media, read and discuss examples of published flash, and write new pieces of our own. All welcome!

Farhana Khalique is a writer, editor, voice over artist, teacher, and PhD candidate from south-west London, UK. Her writing appears in Flash Fusion, Tales from the City, Best Small Fictions, and more. She’s judged the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, is a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, and she’s a writing tutor at City Lit. Find Farhana online @HanaKhalique and www.farhanakhalique.com

Creative Practice Exchange panel hosted by Audrey Niven with Jeanette Sheppard, Jen Rowe and Farhana Khalique

A panel discussion exploring how different aspects of our creative practice can inform our writing. Our expert guests will read from their work and share hints and tricks on how to feed our writing by playing with other creative practices with Jen Rowe – writer and improvisation expert, Jeanette Shepherd- writer and visual artist
and Farhana Khalique, writer and voice-over artist

Audrey Niven (Festival team member is a Scottish writer and creative coach based in London. Her stories are widely anthologised and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. She’s Founder & Editor in Charge at The Propelling Pencil short fiction journal and charity flash competition and judged the 2022 Mslexia Flash Competition. She is also hosting a Reading Session with Live Feedback. (see below)

See Farhana’s bio above

Jen Rowe is an improviser, actor and writer. She has been published in Fly on the Wall Press, Flash Fiction Festival, Bath Flash Fiction, and Henshaw anthologies and, most recently, in The Map of Lost Places (Apex Book Company). She spends most of her time teaching improvised comedy and theatre, and performing with improv companies, The Maydays (Confessions & Happily Never After), and Impromptu Shakespeare . Last year, her self-penned solo show, ‘Tiptree’, about SF writer Alice Sheldon, toured to Kansas City and Glasgow Worldcon, and saw her nominated for best performer at Buxton fringe. She lives in Mid-Sussex, where there are at least thirty words for mud.

Jeanette Sheppard is an artist and writer of flash fiction. Her collection Seventy Percent Water won the 2020 Ellipsis Zine Flash Collection Competition and was shortlisted for the 2021 Saboteur Awards. She has been Artist-in-Residence at National Flash Fiction Day for the last seven years. In her role she creates the cover image for the annual anthology and in January 2025 she facilitated an ekphrastic workshop based around her sketchbooks.
Jeanette also creates cover images for individual writers. You’ll find her most recent work on Jude Higgins’s collection, Clearly Defined Clouds and Jan Kaneen’s, A Learning Curve. In 2021 she was one of fifty wild cards in an episode of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year.
Find out more about Jeanette’s art, including how to commission an image via her website jeanettesheppard.com
Connect with her on Instagram @sheppardjeanette and on Bluesky @jeanettesheppard.bsky.social, where she posts about writing, art and learning how to throw pots.

Read, feedback, write: with Audrey Niven and Fiona McKay

Feedback is one of the most valuable assets we have as writers – offering it and receiving it. But it can be a bit scary. Hosted by Audrey Niven (EIC) with Fiona McKay (The Most Generous and Kind Reader) at The Propelling Pencil, this workshop offers a supportive, encouraging environment to share work, give and receive feedback and, with all that wisdom on board, do some fresh writing.
NB Participants are encouraged to send a story in advance to be printed and shared in the group. Guidelines will be provided for feedback.

Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). She was runner up in the Bath Flash Fiction Novelle in Flash Award with her novella The Lives of the Dead forthcoming this year. Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024 and is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions, 2025. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.She is on X (formerly Twitter) @fionaemckayryan and Bluesky @fionamckay.bsky.social

Transforming Setting into PLACE: with Damian Dressick

Where a story happens can make all the difference when it comes to reaching your reader. But how do you transform mere setting into a rich and dimensionalized sense of place, especially in 1000 words or less? Through a series of readings and exercises, this generative workshop will help you to develop and communicate a powerful and (most importantly) unique sense of place using language. Learn to create your place for your stories!

Damian Dressick is the author of the novel 40 Patchtown and the award-winning flash collection Fables of the Deconstruction. His writing has appeared in more than 100 literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro,Electric Literature, Post Road, New Orleans Review, CutBank, Smokelong Quarterly and New World Writing. A Blue Mountain Residency Fellow, Dressick is the winner of the Harriette Arnow Award and the Jesse Stuart Prize. He co-hosts WANA: LIVE!, a (largely) virtual reading series that brings some of the best Appalachian writers to the world. Damian also serves as Editor-in-Chief for the journal Appalachian Lit.

Workshop with Nora Nadjarian

Details coming soon

Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. She has been commended or placed in numerous competitions, including the Reflex Fiction Flash Fiction Competition and the Mslexia Poetry Competition (2021). Her work was included in Europa 28 (Comma Press, 2020) and she represented Cyprus in the Hay Festival’s Europa28: Visions for the Future in 2020. Her short fiction has appeared, among others, in Sand Journal, FRiGG, MoonPark Review, Lunate, Ellipsis Zine, Milk Candy Review and was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2022 (selected by Kathy Fish).
She has led successful creative writing workshops for the Flash Fiction Festival, the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Beyond Form, Flash Cabin, Retreat West, as well as the Bonington Gallery and Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. 

Workshop with Emily Devane

Details coming soon

Emily Devane is a writer, editor, bookseller and teacher based in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. She has taught workshops and courses for Comma Press, Dahlia Press, London Writers’ Café and Tracks Darlington. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Northern Writers’ Award and a Word Factory Apprenticeship. Emily’s work has been published in Smokelong Quarterly (third place, Grand Micro Contest 2021), Best Microfictions Anthology (2021), New Flash Fiction Review, Lost Balloon, Ellipsis, New Flash Fiction Review, Janus Literary, Ambit and others. She is a founding editor at FlashBack Fiction. Last year she was shortlisted for the prestigious Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing, and she also won second place in the Bath Short Story Award. Emily runs regular spoken word nights and teaches at Moor Words.

Workshop with Alison Woodhouse

Details coming soon

Alison Woodhouse is a writer and teacher. Her flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and anthologised, including In the Kitchen (Dahlia Press), With One Eye on the Cows (Ad Hoc Fiction), Leicester Writes 2018 & 2020 (Dahlia Press), The Real Jazz Baby (Reflex Press), A Girl’s Guide to Fishing (Reflex Press), National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies and Life on the Margins (Scottish Arts Trust Story Awards). She has won a number of story competitions including Flash 500, Hastings, HISSAC (flash & short story), NFFD micro, Biffy50, Farnham, Ad Hoc Fiction and Limnisa and been placed in many others. In 2019 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. She is currently studying for a Ph.D on the Polyphonic Novel. Her debut novella-in-flash The House on the Corner was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in October, 2020. Her flash fiction collection, Family Frames was published by V.Press in September, 2021. Twitter: @AJWoodhouse

Borrowing or Stealing from the Classics: with Farhana Shaikh

Farhana Shaikh is a writer and publisher. She founded The Asian Writer in 2007 and later established Dahlia Books to publish regional and diverse voices. She is the project lead of the ACE-funded Middle Way Mentoring project with regional and national partners. In 2017, Farhana won the Penguin/Travelex Next Great Travel Writer competition. A year later, she was longlisted for the Spread the Word Life Writing Prize and had her short play, Risk staged at Curve theatre. Last year, Farhana was longlisted for the Women’s Prize Discoveries award for her novel-in-progress which was supported through a DYCP grant. Farhana lives in Leicester and on X where she talks about books and publishing @farhanashaikh.

A Short-Short Introduction: A Form of Japanese Flash Fiction with a Twist: with Heidi Clark

Short-shorts (shōtoshōto) are a popular form of light, very short fiction in Japan. With fun and absurd translated examples, this session is an introduction to the history and patterns of short-shorts, with a focus on how the conventions of Japanese humour shape the story’s end. Please bring along one of your short pieces to try some experiments with the ending.

Heidi Clark is a literary translator from Japanese to English. With a focus on experiments in form, she has worked on projects involving the rendering of invented languages, poetry translations defined by Oulipian constraints, and the visual presentation of early modern Japanese graphic narratives (kusazōshi). She is currently completing a Masters in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia and is based in Norwich.