ISSUE 22: JUNE 2019

June 30, 2019June 30, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Here We Are on Planet Earth
By Meg Pokrass

Today we are tanning near each other on bright red beach towels on the sand at Hendri’s beach. This time I don’t let my mind worry too much about Blythe’s exhibitionist traits. I’ve overcome my shyness, and we both have our bikini tops off. They’re lying next to us like useless rags.

Sometimes, there’s a language in her eyes that makes me freeze in my tracks, but my goal in this world is to become less uptight. We are thirteen, and happily, only one of us has an attractive face. The other one of us has an attractive body. My body has some potential but there is no way to know if things will turn out.

Driving around in Blythe’s brother’s SUV, we make weekend plans. We whisper in the back seat. Blythe calls him Jeeves and we hate his jokes. Sometimes he flips us off in the rearview mirror. Continue reading “ISSUE 22: JUNE 2019” →

FEED US WRITING CONTEST

June 1, 2019June 2, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Prompt: “Feed Us”
No Entry Fee
Word limit: 300 words, excluding title
Deadline: SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
Submissions: email to bffnonprofit@gmail.com
Awards:
$100.00 first prize
$30.00 second prize
$20.00 third prize
Judge: Kathy Fish

Continue reading “FEED US WRITING CONTEST” →

ISSUE 21: MARCH 2019

March 31, 2019March 31, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Grocery Shopping With My Dead Mother
By Jodi Freeman

Under the store’s florescent lights I see that this handwritten recipe for Chicken and Dumpling Soup is as fragile as dry butterfly wings. The creases are as good as rips. The page is the color of rancid butter, dotted with grease marks, marred by years of being folded into fourths and stored with 3X5 cards and Good Housekeeping clippings in the unremarkable yellow plastic box.

I snuck my mother’s recipe box out of my father’s house with the other kitchen items I took to my first on-campus apartment. Not that he wouldn’t share it with me, but he would have insisted the artifact itself remain safe at home. I didn’t trust myself to explain that I’m hollow and imagine my mother’s food will fill me. Everyday things that will hold my skin to my bones. Won’t articulate that these recipes may be the letter she never left, explaining what I needed to know about being a woman that she didn’t live to tell me. Continue reading “ISSUE 21: MARCH 2019” →

THANK YOU, EVERYONE

March 4, 2019February 11, 2021 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

9A045634-E7F3-4227-BDCD-C7554CDCB8CD Many thanks to all the Brilliant Flash Fiction supporters who contributed to make our Fifth Anniversary anthology possible. In just nine days, we reached our goal of $1,500 to cover the cost of producing our first print publication, an anthology of the editors’ picks of the best flash fiction featured in Brilliant Flash Fiction (online) over the past five years.

The anthology will also include stories shortlisted in a writing contest to be announced in June.

The anthology launch/celebration will be held in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 19, 2019, in conjunction with the Fort Collins Book Fair. All our supporters are invited to attend the book fair, where Kathy Fish will lead a flash fiction workshop. Kathy has also agreed to judge our writing contest, and to speak at our launch. We are thrilled to have such an inspiring teacher and speaker at our first event. Continue reading “THANK YOU, EVERYONE” →

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

February 21, 2019February 21, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Hello. My name is Dawn Lowe, and I started Brilliant Flash Fiction five years ago with my niece, Laurie Scavo. Brilliant Flash Fiction is an international online literary journal.

Back in 2014, Laurie and I had just survived a series of personal tragedies and wanted to build something good together.

We knew the internet was overpopulated with journals demanding money from writers—in the form of contest entry fees or “reading fees”—and many of these journals would simply disappear after collecting large sums of money.

At Brilliant Flash Fiction, we never charge any fees. We treat writers with dignity, and we’ve created a quality product at brilliantflashfiction.com, illustrated with Laurie’s dazzling photography. We’ve published hundreds of stories and conducted writing contests that have generated over 3,000 international entries. Continue reading “LETTER FROM THE EDITOR” →

ISSUE 20: JANUARY 2019

January 31, 2019January 31, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Starlight
By Paul Ratner

Hiroshima, 6th August 1945

I was sitting in class staring at Mr. Takashi writing algebra in big loopy lettering on the chalkboard when the bomb landed. He was wearing a short-sleeved white cotton shirt with black slacks that billowed around his skinny legs and a pair of black-rimmed glasses that perched on the bridge of his rubbery nose.

I’m not sure why I can remember him so vividly now. It was just an ordinary school day and me and my thirty or so classmates had no idea when we filed into trigonometry that morning that this day would change our lives.

But somehow every minute detail of that day is seared into my memory, like it’s a part of me and I’m a part of it. And so my life became divided in two—those childhood days that came before the bomb and the days that marched onwards defiantly after. The bomb itself is somehow outside of my life now, like a break in a paragraph, instead of a chapter in itself. Continue reading “ISSUE 20: JANUARY 2019” →

ISSUE 19: SEPTEMBER 2018

September 30, 2018January 12, 2019 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Call St. Mary’s
By Lila Rabinovich

Nancy would later tell anyone who asked that she escaped the hailstorm by ducking into the first available open door, which happened to lead into a church. She’d been making her way back home slowly, switching her purse from the crook of her right arm to the crook of her left and back again as they got tired of the weight. It was just bad luck that there’d been such a massive storm, so uncharacteristic for February, on that exact day, when her purse was so heavy. She was carrying Walter’s favorite book, his glasses and hers, a thermos still half full of black tea, an empty Tupperware (she despised hospital food), her billfold, her house keys, a packet of Kleenex, a packet of mints, a small leather pouch with all her regular medication (the Lipitor and the diuretics and the aspirin), and her cell phone. It was a lot for such a small, feminine bag. Continue reading “ISSUE 19: SEPTEMBER 2018” →

“WOW US” – WRITING CONTEST RESULTS

September 18, 2018February 11, 2021 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

This writing contest was a lot of fun for the staff at Brilliant Flash Fiction. The entries were judged in-house and provided us with months of reading pleasure. We would like to thank the 350 writers who took the time to share their creativity and brilliance with us. Choosing a shortlist and three prize-winners was a difficult task.

First Prize: LIGHT THE DAMN FIRE by Eileen Malone
Second Prize: Calculus by Suzanne Freeman
Third Prize: Gustav Mahler’s Nipples by Laton Carter

Judges: Brilliant Flash Fiction staff
Theme: None!

First Prize: LIGHT THE DAMN FIRE

Assistant Editor Ed Higgins’ comments: As novelist and short-story writer Richard Harding Davis observed: “The secret of good writing is to say an old thing a new way or to say a new thing an old way.” Eileen Malone’s story carries the marks of both. The plot and plotting of the betrayed vengeful wife is, of course, a much repeated tale. Malone reinfuses this old nugget with a realism of setting as well as giving her protagnist-narrator a believable infusion of emotional hurt by a betraying husband. All of which sets the story up for the “new thing” twist on good ‘ol revenge. In the couple’s get-away cabin the wife sets alight the stuffed fireplace—but with the vent closed. Continue reading ““WOW US” – WRITING CONTEST RESULTS” →

ISSUE 18: JUNE 2018

June 30, 2018November 15, 2018 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

The Wild Birds
By Karen Schauber

Cormorants swoop and dive-bomb into the salty water, their trajectory stealthy and deep. The ravenous dog looks on, the birds out of reach. He paces back and forth, riveted along the water’s edge. Frothy waves tickle his paws, tracing wet impressions in the sand. He is prepared to wait. His stomach growls and bends.

The dog has been on the hunt for five days, lost far from home, disoriented since the electrical storm. He is managing quite well for a purebred: cozy cave, blankie, and binky, out of sight, out of mind. Foraging comes surprisingly easy for him, as if it were a daily hustle. He’s made friends too; first ever beyond the local fenced-in dog park. His master would be impressed, no, worried, both. He does not know that his human family has been busy plastering the neighbourhood with posters, leaving bowls of premium kibble and fresh water out on the veranda. The porch-light left on 24/7, beckoning him home. He is too far away to see the beacon. Continue reading “ISSUE 18: JUNE 2018” →

ISSUE 17: MARCH 2018

March 31, 2018November 15, 2018 ~ Brilliant Flash Fiction

Something About the Romans
By Evan Massey

On the porch, the radio plays old tunes. Sometimes our heads bob. I’m on the top step. Below me, Bianca sits behind my little sister, Tia, braiding her hair. She combs out Tia’s rough hair with an orange comb, applies grease. Bianca doesn’t have rough hair, no. She has good hair. Tia doesn’t care much for Bianca because of that. It’s a girl thing, I guess.

My mama used to do Tia’s hair. She was gentler with that orange comb. She’d even cut my hair when it got too long. Boys shouldn’t have long hair, she’d say. But I loved it when she’d cut it. We’d talk about life, me becoming a man, and sometimes about my father. Her gentle hands would glide the clippers through my hair, trimming it to her liking. I would feel like a new me afterwards. But now my hair’s the longest it’s ever been. It gets longer by the day, it seems.

It’s hot out, even hotter with this long hair. Inside’s no better. The Mississippi sun tans us, sweat beads dot our black skin. I hold a cup of lemonade to my forehead, then take a swallow, ice cubes kiss my lips. It’s more sugar than lemon—Bianca’s doing. I watch her jerk Tia’s head with that orange comb again, smearing more grease. The comb works through the hair. The sweet, greasy fragrance sweeps across my nose. Continue reading “ISSUE 17: MARCH 2018” →