Updates & Submission Calls & Prompts!
Hi Everyone!
This month we are taking an editorial break, but we wanted to pop in to remind you of our upcoming submission calls and let you know of some exciting updates from our authors and editorial team.
First of all…
We’re Open!
Our June submissions call is OPEN! From June 1-15, please submit flash nonfiction (500 words or fewer) on the theme of RESISTANCE. Full guidelines are here, and please read them carefully.
Having trouble thinking of ideas for RESISTANCE? Tell us about a time you resisted something powerful, or had your own power questioned. Tell us about an outer event that triggered inner feelings of resistance. Tell us about quiet vs. loud resistance, or political vs. personal resistance. Push and pull, contradict— even resist your own ideas!
Upcoming Submission Calls & Prompts
July 1-15: HOPE
HOPE is our desire to want something to happen or to be true — a promise of love, the conception and birth of a child, a cure for cancer, the outcome of an election, the end of war, a home run. Hope is faith in the future, despite the odds. How has hope sustained you through good times and bad?
August 1-15: COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY can be stifling, or mean solace or survival. Think of what the earliest communities you grew up in taught you. What communities have you created for yourself, or which ones do you wish existed? Which communities have changed your life?
—No submissions in September—
October 1-15: PORTALS
PORTALS, literal or metaphorical, can lead to other worlds, but they can also transform us in the course of a single decision. Consider the quiet thresholds you’ve crossed that ended up reshaping your direction, identity, or understanding of yourself. Think of a phone call, taking or leaving a job, or another event that may have revealed its significance only in hindsight. What are the portals that have brought you from one world into the next or represented new beginnings or changes in your life?
November 1-15: ROOTS
ROOTS: we cut them, nurture them, discover them, and also dye them! Eat them, grow them, travel toward them, escape them, or even hide them. And also yearn for them. Might rootlessness be a blessing, or being rooted a curse? Tell a story about roots as they have made a difference in your life.
Don’t forget to refer to our Submission Guidelines before submitting.
Past Issues (They’re AMAZING!)
We’re so proud of all five of our issues so far! Each of us has had the opportunity to be the lead editor on an issue, and we’ve loved getting to know our authors and their stories. In case you missed them, here are our first five issues:
Issue #1 (STILL):“I Should, But Don’t” by David Grubb
Issue #2 (BODY): “Ragged Beauty” by Patti Jo Amerein
Issue #3 (RHYTHM): “And what about the way hope…” by Liza Porter
Issue #4 (DREAMS): “This Time” by Alex M. Stein
Issue #5 (GROWTH): “Gravity” by Melenie Freedom Flynn
News from the In a Flash Community
Patti Jo Amerein, our featured author for BODY, was recently published in Brevity Blog! Enjoy her piece on breaking the rules by honoring rhythm.
Liza Porter, our featured author for RHYTHM, read her piece “And what about the way hope…” live on Arizona public radio. We loved hearing it in her voice! (It’s the very first featured piece, at the start of the recording.)
Editor news:
Casey continues to appear on podcasts in support of her recent memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, including, most recently, Freelance Writing Direct with @estelleerasmus and Because Everyone Has a Story with Daniela Stockfleth-Menis.
Nina’s memoir-in-essays, Body: My Life in Parts, launched on May 27 and she published a companion piece in HuffPost Personal on May 16. She also appeared on the Daring to Tell Podcast: True Stories by the Writers Who Lived Them on May 6, and was interviewed on the Creatively ADHD Substack on May 3.
Kate has been busy this year, with poems published in Literary Mama & The Nature of Our Times, teaching at Barrelhouse’s annual writing conference, and a travel piece forthcoming in the New York Times. She will also speak at the 2025 Mental Health & Motherhood Summit, held virtually Oct. 10 & 11.
Cindy recently completed a month-long fiction intensive through Image magazine with Andrew Krivak, author of The Bear and The Sojourn, a National Book Award Finalist. This summer she will be hunkering down in her home office hoping to complete a revised draft of her novel.
Leanne’s flash essay “The Band Room” (recorded at Lincoln Center here) has been anthologized for a second time by Writers Read (formerly Read650) in their ten-year compilation, Well Said, Well Read.
