Published quarterly on the last day of January, March, June and September
Prompt: Write a story based on Adam Kluger’s art displayed here
No Entry Fee
Word limit: 300 words, excluding title
Deadline: FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Submissions: email to
brilliantflashfiction@gmail.com
Prizes:
50 euro first prize (or equivalent amount in your currency)
25 euro second prize
15 euro third prize
Artist & Judge: Adam Kluger Continue reading “ART PROMPT WRITING CONTEST!”
This Heady Thing Called Love
By Linda Ferguson
He calls and I say I’ll come.
I haven’t seen him in three days. Unless you count Tuesday, in the dining hall. Ah, there he was, in line with the tall ballerina with the beret tipped over her Lauren Bacall bob.
Good thing the roommate is in class right now. I wouldn’t want her watching as I stand in front of the mirror and finger the magenta streak in my hair I added the day he first kissed me. She was here last week when I was a sodden, shuddering ball on my crumpled bed, having just heard his sudden confession. She crossed her arms then and said I could do better, her voice rising to vehemence when she called him a “lousy boyfriend.” Which makes me think she might not endorse my getting all gussied up now, smoothing on China-red lipstick, pulling on black fishnets, dabbing my throat with the perfume Aunt Jeanine sent me last Christmas. No, I don’t need anyone frowning at me as I clasp a slender silver chain around my ankle or as I turn in front of the mirror again to check out the short tangerine-colored dress with the coral stitching around its hem. Continue reading “ISSUE 14: JUNE 2017”
THE COLD AFTER THE SNOW
By T.M. Spooner
The gritty scrape of metal against pavement woke Ted from a way-too-short night of sleep. Due to heavy snow he and his wife, Priscilla, had arrived late last night and it was barely eight a.m. He went to the bedroom window of his wife’s childhood home to find Priss, as he affectionately called her, shoveling the front sidewalk. She wore a red cap and scarf, recently knitted by her mother, and her green eyes squinted against the winter glare and her entire face looked hurt. It’s the kind of look that made Ted’s heart cast out to her.
Ted slipped into a pair of jeans and pulled on a wool sweater and hurried downstairs. The morning air was as cold as Priss had promised it would be on the heels of such a big snowfall.
“Need some help?” he asked. Priss didn’t hear and kept on. Continue reading “ISSUE 12: JANUARY 2017”
Many thanks to the 450 international writers who entered this contest—and we extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Abigail Favale for offering her time and expertise to choose the top three prizewinners.
First Prize: Erin O’Loughlin, Brother Fox
Second Prize: Susan James, Home for the Holidays
Third Prize: Anne Anthony, Bathroom Break
Judge: Dr. Abigail Favale
Theme: Aftermath
FIRST PRIZE: Brother Fox by Erin O’Loughlin
Judge’s Comments: This piece does everything a flash fiction piece should do. A benign yet beguiling beginning, zooming out to reveal a potential tragedy unfolding in real time. I read it with a slow-dawning dread that climaxes at just the right moment, the moment of the “flash.”
Brother Fox
By Erin O’Loughlin
Imagine the fox, the only spark of color in this bright landscape. All that endless powder white, broken only by a flash of red—there—then gone again. There is more life than you know, under all these layers and layers of snow.
Imagine how he cocks his head listening (the skill is not unique to the male of the species—vixens do it also). You can see he is straining his senses, listening for the soft scrabble under the snow. Then, ears high in the air, he dives headfirst into the snow, body flailing awkwardly as the front paws find purchase under all that cold white. And he will come back up with a limp little mouse in his jaws. So far this might be an acute sense of hearing, an expert dancer’s timing. But the strange thing is that nine times out of ten, a fox that dives to the north will catch his prey. A fox that leaps and dives to the south will lose it. Somehow a fox’s body is aligned to the magnetic north. In tune with it. If his quarry lies that way, the hunt will be good. An innate geo-location, gift of the wintry gods that govern small creatures. Continue reading “AFTERMATH – WRITING CONTEST RESULTS”
Ernesto
By Melissa Hunter Gurney
Ernesto left his wife and she forgot what flowers looked like. He used to buy her flowers on Sundays and she became so used to them she hardly saw them anymore. That’s why he left—she didn’t see him. She saw the workings of their life together. The way he woke up before her and the coffee was already made—a cup placed on the space between burners. Now, there was no cup, no coffee, no freedom from rolling over into the middle of the bed. The middle wasn’t a luxury anymore, a place to spread out. Now the middle was merely empty and she stayed on her side unless she was having one of those crying fits where she throttled herself onto what used to be his side hoping to catch his scent engraved in the fibers. When he left she didn’t change the sheets for 2 months. They were white and her body stained one whole side beige—his side was crisp and un-festered. Continue reading “ISSUE 11: SEPTEMBER 2016”
Prompt: “AFTERMATH”
No Entry Fee
Word limit: 500 words, excluding title
Deadline: JANUARY 15, 2017
Submissions: email to
brilliantflashfiction@gmail.com
Prizes:
50 euro first prize (or equivalent amount in your currency)
25 euro second prize
15 euro third prize
Judge: Dr. Abigail Favale Continue reading “2017 AFTERMATH WRITING CONTEST!”
We would like to thank Judge Paul Beckman for his able assistance in selecting three top stories; and we are, as always, grateful to the 287 international writers who entered this contest.
First Prize: It Came in the Mail by Damhnait Monaghan
Second Prize: Princess Party by Jennifer Stuart
Third Prize: The Secret of the Snoring Time by Elizabeth Fisher
Judge: Paul Beckman
Theme: It Came in the Mail
FIRST PRIZE: It Came in the Mail by Damhnait Monaghan
Judge’s comments: “The reason I selected this story is that at no time did the author give in and let the reader know what it was that came in the mail. It’s hard to not sprinkle clues but this author pulled it off and finished with a perfect ending. Readers’ imaginations will take them from place to place deciding what came in the mail and that makes this a fun read as well as a creative one. Congratulations.”
It Came in the Mail
By Damhnait Monaghan
It came in the mail, addressed to The Occupant. There were two of us so I waited for my flat mate to get home from work. When I heard her keys jingling, I went to the meet her at the door.
“We got mail.”
We never get proper mail; it’s all advertising circulars and find Jesus pamphlets. I’ve often wondered why people bother with post-boxes. Until today.
She followed me into the kitchen, flinging her bag on the table. I gave her the mail. She twisted it around, examining every angle.
“You open it.”
“No, you.”
So she carefully untied the bow and let the tissue paper fall away. Continue reading “SPECIAL DELIVERY – CONTEST RESULTS”
White Flowers at Dusk
By Jay Merill
Manon is an ingénue in life’s high drama. Love has gone, she feels alone. As though on some empty stage. Luc had ended things on the day they were to run away together, the timing as perverse as that. She’d sped to meet him through the Paris streets, seen him standing by the roadside all awkwardness and tight anxiety. A part she had never seen him play before. And she’d thought, Oh but he seems like a stranger; had a premonition of what was to happen. Since that moment she’s felt feverish; hardly able to keep still. Already one week ago now but her restless mood goes on.
It is evening. She’s been walking for hours in a circle which began in the Place Maubert then spread outwards. Eventually she arrives at the suburbs. Sees the high-rises in dull unpainted grey, the dome of a church. Now a canal, some factory complex. A gypsy encampment by a railway cutting, the wrecks of old cars. All unreal as stage sets. Her pent-up agony is unabsorbed. Continue reading “ISSUE 10: JUNE 2016”
Raphael and His Daughter
By Thomas Sanfilip
I saw her walking toward the Ponte Vecchio again late in the afternoon. Not even her eyes could tell where, so warm and lustrous, but always cast down as if the earth speaking, and her father watching, always watching, though not directly, as if a master guiding a horse from behind that, with the tap of a switch or the flick of an eyebrow or some low whistle in his throat, could make her turn or pirouette. She only had to hear the wind to move closer or more distant from everything around. He could direct her ever so subtly in a new direction like some magician probing a dark secret.
This passionless movement of the earth below her feet and the father’s power to move it and to watch his daughter move with it over the Arno, back and forth, was like some frothy wave of light. Her long brown hair twisted over her shoulder made me wonder. She looked like some melancholic angel fallen to earth, though no words passed between us, only this languid, distant walk, a product of her father’s training, his mind, his thoughts. Here he was with daughter pausing to his reckoning, her face consuming my heart like some wild inextinguishable flame night and day on the streets of Florence. Continue reading “ISSUE 9: MARCH 2016”
Many thanks to Judge Opal Palmer Adisa for judging this contest. We received 216 international entries.
First Prize: Here Are Some Legos by Joonho Jo
Second Prize: Grow Your Own by Deborah Carey
Third Prize: The New Frontier by Christine Metsger
Honorable Mention: Red, Black and Noorie by Syed Zeeshan Ahmed
Judge: Opal Palmer Adisa
Theme: The Future
FIRST PRIZE: Here Are Some Legos by Joonho Jo
Judge’s comments: “The future is about building and this story effectively does that—builds, destroys and rebuilds again the human pain and triumph, while poignantly showing that it is possible for each of us to create our own reality as children aptly do.”
Here Are Some Legos
By Joonho Jo
Here are some Legos.
Build the house first. Build the living room with the old box TV that you and your brother JJ watched Spongebob on. Build the flowers in the front yard you watered every day and kneeled next to, waiting for something magical to happen until Mom told you to come in because it was getting dark. Build the kitchen where you heard the clanking of pans as you patiently waited for Mom to cook your favorite dish, Kimchi jigae. Build the bedroom where you slept after Dad felt your forehead for your temperature—just in case you had a fever—and then tucked you in.
Then, build the school. Build Mrs. Wiegartner’s class and all your closest friends: Athena, Alec, Jacob, Madison, Natalia, Norman, Yasmine. Build the water fountain that you drank out of every day after recess. Build the seats in the school auditorium where Mom, Dad, and JJ clapped as you let out a sigh of relief after your first cello performance.
Then tear it all apart. Continue reading “SPRINGTIME – WRITING CONTEST RESULTS”
BRILLIANT FLASH FICTION 