Celebrating micro fiction 18th-22nd June 2021
June is the season for flash fiction in Aotearoa New Zealand, ever since 2012, when National Flash Fiction Day (NFFD) was founded, along with the journal Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction. All this month, you will find online events with international writers talking about the fine art of writing small. We also see the exciting announcements around the national flash fiction competition (Long List & Short List announced here; judges this year are Auckland’s Paula Morris and Dunedin’s own Diane Brown), and the international Micro Madness competition – see winning micros posted each day June 1 – June 22, here.
This year’s celebration in Ōtepoti Dunedin begins with the launch of NFFD founder Michelle Elvy’s new hybrid collection, the other side of better, on Friday, 18 June, and continues with a workshop (Saturday, 19 June – taught by Majella Cullinane), an afternoon of Piano Stories (Sunday, 20 June – with Adrian Mann and Tom McGrath) and of course the June 22 event which will include guest readers, music and dance interpretations of the small form, plus prize announcements and more.
Here, we share a conversation exploring a bit more about flash fiction. NFFD central committee member Vaughan Rapatahana talks with NFFD founder Michelle Elvy…
Vaughan Rapatahana: What got you first interested in this form – that is, flash fiction? What is your background here?
Michelle Elvy: I first started writing flash fiction in earnest when I set a challenge for myself, in 2010, to write a story a week for a year. I did this with my high school friend, John Wentworth Chapin, and the website we first set up in May 2010 quickly grew into the 52|250 A Year of Flash platform. That year of writing was a great challenge and excellent fun as well. I learned quite a lot about focus and control, and also the possibilities of the form. I started to free up my writing – to learn to experiment and stretch a bit more, to take chances. Since then, I've learned how reading and writing flash fiction can be a marvellous tool for almost any kind of writing.
In the middle of that 52|250 year, I joined Sam Rasnake as the fiction editor of the journal, Blue Five Notebook. Sam had founded an earlier version as a poetry journal, and in 2011 he decided to add flash fiction to the mix. I was delighted when he invited me to join him as fiction editor, focusing on flash – we both saw how poetry and flash are overlapping and aligned. Together, we edited Blue Five Notebook until the end of 2018. It was there that I discovered the common ground between flash fiction and poetry.
Then, in 2012, I founded NFFD and Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction with Northland writing pal Sian Williams; both began on a road trip from the far north of New Zealand to Auckland. The first issue of Flash Frontier featured writers mostly from the North Island and the first year saw a monthly schedule, with a theme presented each month. Soon we had submissions from all over New Zealand. Now, we publish bi-monthly, with issues alternating between NZ-focused writing and international contents. We also publish the NFFD winning stories each year, in the June/ July issue.
National Flash Fiction Day also had modest beginnings, with the support of the Auckland writing community and especially Graeme Lay, who was the first to put together collections of short, short stories in New Zealand, back in 1997. Since NFFD’s first year, we’ve seen impressive submissions for the competition from across the country, north to south, and we sponsor prize-giving events each year in Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, Hamilton, Wellington and Northland. Last year, with COVID, we moved everything online and developed a wonderful international component to NFFD; this year, because that proved so popular and successful, we’re continuing with the online international series of panels in addition to local events.
VR: What about your own writing? Along with editing, you are also a practitioner of the form. Can you tell us more about your approach to flash fiction?
ME: While editing and reading quite a lot of flash fiction on a weekly basis, I also enjoy writing, yes, and I try to push myself to find ways to experiment a bit further. My novel, the everrumble, is a 'small novel in small forms'; it has the story arc of a novel, told in small segments that moved around in terms of geography and time. It is also hybrid in form, including both prose and poetry. There is room for movement (in both content and method) with this form, and I really enjoy the challenges of containing a sprawling novelistic story in a controlled space. This year, I judged the 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award. New Zealand writers may know of this novella-in-flash competition because last year, in 2020, Tracey Slaughter placed second with if there is no shelter. Tracey is also part of the NFFD Central Committee – a marvellous poet, storyteller, editor and supporter of the small form.
Tracey Slaughter will also be at the launch of my new book, the other side of better, which is on pre-order at the publisher’s site and coming to NZ June 18. Tracey will give a brief introduction to the small form and the many ways one can experiment and explore using a small space. She’s an expert at this – anyone who has read her writing will know this already. Other guests include local poets and friends who will ‘launch’ the book, since the publisher is in the UK. And the artist whose work is on the cover, Jennifer Halli, will share some of her artwork and talk about the stories she tells with her beautiful collagraph prints (more about her work here).
VR: Are there distinct differences between flash fiction and prose poetry – and if so, what are they?
ME: It's a good question, and one examined in the 2018 anthology, Bonsai: Best small stories of Aotearoa New Zealand. That was the first of its kind – a collection of small-form writing here in New Zealand. I edited the book with James Norcliffe and Frankie McMillan, and the pages included newcomers as well as experienced storytellers and poets. We saw a great deal of variety on the page – what the small form can do! And the more we looked at the shape of the book, the more we saw the blurring of the lines between poetry and flash fiction. Of course, conventional wisdom will tell you that there is perhaps more of a narrative arc in a small flash than in a poem with clear fragmented line breaks, but I think it's far more fruitful to see the similarities between prose poetry and flash, the way you may move back and forth between the two, with suggestion and innuendo, imagery and metaphor. Both poetry and flash fiction are most effective when language driven.
VR: What, for you, are the great features that flash fiction has, that is what does it offer any prospective writer, please?
ME: I really like how, within the constraints of word count, a writer may experiment and flex, and ultimately find the path to an entirely new place. You are free to move and explore in a small story on the page, in a way that even, say, a novel – though expansive – makes much harder. Also, I like the challenge of trying to write in a small space: you have to focus, you have to move right into the meat of the story. Even so, you can skilfully work quite a lot of story into a small moment; you must often pay attention to what's happening at the edges. Finally, with flash fiction, you must learn to edit ruthlessly – which is a skill that will do any writer a great deal of good.
I teach writing, using flash fiction as a tool. My classes have poets and novelists, journalists and memoirists in them. It's interesting to see how so many different kinds of writers can use the skills gained from paying attention to the fine detail to apply to their own writing.
Which brings me to the question: what kinds of stories can you tell with flash fiction? Well, there is no limit beyond word count. As we stated in the preface to Bonsai, flash fiction is a 'hugely inclusive and elastic form with protean possibilities'.
For newcomers to the form, flash fiction will ignite your creativity, without feeling overwhelming. It will help you pay attention to language, structure and story, while blending elements of poetry and prose. As I note on my teaching site: it's expressive, experimental and elegant.
For anyone who wants to learn more about the small form, please do come to the events planned June 18-22 this year!