Meet The Editor #1: Casey Mulligan Walsh

October Submission Theme: STILL

Hi, We’re The Flashies, and We Want To Publish Your Work.

We’re a writing group devoted to flash CNF (creative nonfiction), and we’ve spent the last two years editing each other’s pieces while racking up publishing creds. We love working in flash— the electric way a single sentence, a single short paragraph, a single phrase can change the way you view yourself and the world in the span of a moment. We want to create more opportunities for short flash nonfiction in the literary world, and are excited to do so here.

The five of us will co-edit the IN A FLASH literary magazine here on Substack, each month publishing one piece of excellent creative nonfiction, written to theme, in 500 words or less. We’ll also spotlight the author with a Q&A section and lots of editorial compliments.

If you’re already excited about submitting, yay! Here’s a link to our submission guidelines. Our first submission period will be from October 1-15 on the theme of STILL. (Interpret as you will!)

If you’re already excited about reading, yay! Please subscribe and tell your friends.

Meet The Editor: Casey Mulligan Walsh

Hi, I’m Casey!

I began writing flash nonfiction in 2011, mostly of the 750-word variety. But when I became enthralled with more compressed, micro memoir in early 2022, the power of intense concision opened up for me. Writing short, sometimes experimenting with unconventional form, has often resulted in work that captures an energy somehow more expansive than its container.

This has made me eager to learn more, and reading the work of others who write in this format is one of the best ways to do that. I’m excited to be part of this new literary endeavor, a passion for the five of us who are co-editors. We’ve grown as a group over the past couple of years, are eager to undertake this project together, and look forward to getting to know other writers who share our love of micro CNF. If that’s you, we can’t wait to read your work.

The Essay

For our first 5 posts, we’ll be introducing ourselves to you through our own flash writing. Here’s my essay:

Still

You can come in now, they say, holding open the door between the waiting room and the inner sanctum of the ER, and I stand, smoothing my wispy summer dress and unsticking my bare legs from the vinyl chair where I’ve waited for a half hour that’s seemed like days, still praying, knowing yet not knowing, listening to the whirr of the helicopter blades on the pad on the other side of the window, never realizing it was there for my son, should he make it, but he didn’t make it, that’s what the doctor said when she came to tell me moments ago, sadness in her eyes, her shoulders stooped like someone had given her a thousand-ton weight to pass on to me, and everything got quiet in my head, as if snow had fallen all around me and nothing, not the hugest boulder dropped from the highest height, could ever make a sound that would reach me in there, and my dear friend follows me through that door—no putting anything in my way on her watch—and the nurses, somber and anxious, steer me to the first room on the right, the one where I spent a long Sunday twelve years ago with my one-year-old daughter who’d burned her hand on a heater in a freak October snowstorm—she left bandaged and groggy yet she’d be fine, the worst is over, I thought then—but now my son, always so full of life, lies on a gurney in the center of the room, still, eyes closed but mouth open, like he’s had a bad day and needs to sleep it off, that’s all, the air is heavy and charged and smells of antiseptic, and the medical staff hover behind me, Hold her elbow, she’ll faint one man says, and, annoyed, I ask them to leave, they can’t understand, how could they, that I’ve known this would be the end of the story, the one I’ve dreaded, the only one that’s ever made sense, with life spinning wild until it blew us all apart and no end in sight, and I speak to my son in my mind, my first baby, the one who made us a family, who brought me back to family after all of mine had died, oh how his antics delighted us back then, no hint of the danger to come, I tell him he can rest now, that I understand, my words senseless yet swollen with meaning, and a breeze caresses my cheek in what is surely a hug from beyond, then it’s gone—his spirit knew better than to hang around in this room rank with death and decay, that’s how it feels—See you later, Mom, I hear him say, on the tops of the trees, that’s where I’ll be, and by God, he is there, decades later, still my shining star, still shouting, Look at me, Mom, he still can’t sit still, my boy, he’s with me. Still.

This piece was originally published in Split Lip on June 14, 2022.

How This Essay Came To Be

(Originally published in “Just One Thing” on the Split Lip site)

“Still” is my first compressed flash nonfiction piece. Following along where my mind took me, mining the associations, evoked a certain alchemy, like a study in the way the brain works. With conventions suspended—much like they were in living this scene, with no road map for deep grief—words poured out. A single paragraph, breathless, with few sentence breaks, was the perfect vehicle for digging into a moment as intense as this one. It brought things out in my writing I would not have otherwise put down on the page in just that way. Though revisiting this wrenching experience was not easy, the writing felt a little like magic.

Here’s a Writing Prompt To Inspire You…

To experiment with single-sentence flash: Think of an event—a moment, little more—that evokes in you a sense of urgency or intensity or even breathlessness. Begin writing, letting the words flow, following them where they take you. Allow yourself to meander if that feels right, inserting asides and thoughts in the way that our minds naturally do. When you’re done drafting, reread with an eye for present action, memories, and sensory details. If you realize some of these are scant or missing (typically the latter two), weave these in. As you revise and reread, does the piece begin to come alive for you through these components?

Rinse and repeat.

Author Bio

Casey Mulligan Walsh is the author of The Full Catastrophe (Motina Books, February 18, 2025), a memoir of the search for belonging and living with grief beside joy. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, HuffPost, Next Avenue, Modern Loss, Split Lip, Five Minutes, Emerge Journal, Barren Magazine, and numerous other literary magazines, is forthcoming in Hippocampus, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Casey lives with her husband in upstate New York. Connect with Casey at her Substack, Embracing The Full Catastrophe.

Submission Calls

Before submitting, please refer to our Submission Guidelines page. (We’ll be linking to it in every new post, don’t worry!)

Our first author-submitted publication will be in January 2025.

Upcoming: From October 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of STILL.

From November 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of BODY.

From December 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of RHYTHM.

From January 1-15, please submit pieces on the theme of DREAMS.