2022 Contributors

Alex Reece Abbott  is a New Zealand-Irish writer across genres and forms, published in Best Small Fictions, Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand and Heron (Katherine Mansfield Society), among others. A Penguin Random House WriteNow finalist, often shortlisted, her work has won the Irish Novel Fair, Northern Crime, Arvon and HG Wells prizes. www.alexreeceabbott.info @AlexReeceAbbott

Adebisi Amori is a creative writer and student from Ibadan, Nigeria who is also currently adulting. Follow her journey: notesonadulting.substack.com

Allen Ashley is an award-winning writer, editor and poet based in the UK. His most recent book is the poetry collection Echoes from an Expired Earth (Demain Publishing, UK, paperback 2021). He is the founder of the advanced science fiction and fantasy group Clockhouse London Writers. Allen previously featured in the ‘Doors’ issue of Flash Frontier.

Katie Avagliano is a college writing instructor. She lives in South Jersey with her dog.

Caterina Baldi was born on 6th March 1983. She is an Italian children’s books illustrator, author, translator and English teacher for little kids. She never misses an episode of her Neapolitan soap opera. Swimming in the winter sea is the year’s purpose, but she has not found the courage yet. Her picture book, Three Cats in the Sink, will be published by Settenove in May 2022. She is eager to write thousands of new stories and tales.

Rebecca Ball is a teacher based near Ōtautahi, New Zealand. She has had writing published in a range of places including Landfall, London Grip, Shotglass Journal, Turbine | Kapohau and Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.

Raised in Nova Scotia, Matthew Charles Barron currently lives in Vancouver, BC, where he works as a development writer. His fiction has appeared in the anthology This Will Only Take a Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction (Guernica editions) and the journal Change Seven. A former journalist, he holds an MA in journalism and has contributed non-fiction to numerous Canadian consumer magazines. 

Carin Bevan is a South African writer and editor based in the south of England. She's written for magazines, websites, text books and television.

Claire Beynon is a Dunedin-based artist and published writer. In addition to her solo practice, she works collaboratively on a diverse range of projects with fellow artists, writers, scientists and musicians in New Zealand and abroad. Passion. Play. Creative exchange. | www.clairebeynon.com | https://www.instagram.com/claire.beynon/

Shannon Bowring’s work has appeared in numerous journals, has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net, and was selected for Best Small Fictions 2021. She was a Finalist for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance 2021 Maine Literary Awards. Shannon earned her MFA at Stonecoast, where she served as Editor-in-Chief for the Stonecoast Review.

John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park’s first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He is the founder and general editor of The Journal of Radical Wonder. He lives in Jamestown, NY.

Jeff Burd spends a lot of time writing and thinking about writing, and worrying about not writing and thinking about writing.

Hawke’s Bay writer Shelley Burne-Field (Ngāti Mutunga; Ngāti Rārua) was a finalist in the 2021 Voyager media awards, is a regular writer at e-Tangata, and an alumni of the Auckland University Masters in Creative Writing 2019-2020. Her short story ‘Pinching out dahlias’ is the most read story ever published on Reading Room.

Gretchen Carroll lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, with her husband and son. She has worked in journalism and communications for more than 20 years, and enjoys writing flash fiction. More on her online writing portfolio.

Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her stories have been published by Ellipsis Zine, The Molotov Cocktail, Reflex Fiction, Fictive Dream, Janus Literary and others, and have been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize and the Bridport Prize. You can find her via www.anikacarpenter.com or @stillsquirrel

Rosie Copeland is a New Zealand word-artist based in Wellington. She is currently writing a novel for young adults. She completed several writing papers at the IIML. Rosie belongs to several writing groups in New Zealand and collaborated with Atrocious Poets (USA) in 2021 for their Haunting of Hebron Library, a poetry display. In 2022 her collaged poem was exhibited in the Lightbox Project at Thistle Hall, Wellington. Her poetry is published in Mayhem, Awa Wahine and Mindfood, and forthcoming in Honeyguide (USA), Ethelzine (USA). A short story was published in Newsrooms’ Reading Room in 2021.

Charmaine Crossey is an MA English graduate and Creative Writing student from Hampshire, England. She enjoys writing in all its forms but has a passion for flash fiction. Her first ever flash story, In the Soup, was shortlisted and published by the Farnham Flash Fiction Competition in 2019. @WritesCharmaine

Jane Mary Curran lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She is retired from a college professorship in piano and a second career as a hospice chaplain and spiritual director. She is the author of Indiana Girl, Poems (2019) and Midwives of the Spirit: Thoughts on Caregiving (2002).

Patrick Darby lives in Seattle. He likes to depress himself by reading about climate science and politics, then read and write about science fiction and fantasy to pick himself back up.

Judy Darley is a fiction writer, journalist and occasional poet from Bristol, UK. She's the author of fiction collections The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Her words have been shared on BBC radio and dock walls, in bookshops, museums, cafés, caves, pubs, a disused church and an artist’s studio. Find Judy at skylightrain.com; https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.

Rebecca Douglas is an Australian writer whose work has been published by Overland journal, Reflex Fiction, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Kill Your Darlings, Visible Ink, Verandah, The Big Issue, the ABC and various other lovely places.

Jacob Dowling is a New Zealand writer based in Ōtautahi Christchurch and well-travelled throughout the South Island. He is studying creative writing at the University of Canterbury and gradually expanding the forms in which he writes. He has poetry published ReDraft 21, One of the Wild Kids.

Nick Fairclough is a writer on the cusp: his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, he’s been shortlisted and longlisted in competitions … You get the idea. He lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with his family. More here.

Linda Grierson-Irish lives in Shropshire UK. Her stories have appeared in various lovely publications online and in print. She's been shortlisted twice for the Bridport Prize, included on the BIFFY50 (Best British and Irish Flash Fiction) 2018-19, and received two honourable mentions for Best Microfiction 2019.

Chris Griffiths writes quirky, strange and downright gruesome short stories and books. She won the inaugural Radio NZ Short Story competition and her writing has been short/long-listed for prizes including the Bridport. She was a journalist and has travelled the world, now she writes in her garden Escape Pod in gothic Dunedin, New Zealand's Edinburgh of the South. See more at www.christine-griffiths.com.

The lignified skeleton of Rata Ingram is home to a number of beetles.

Rosalie Kempthorne lives and writes in Dunedin, New Zealand. She writes mostly fantasy fiction, but may sometimes take a detour into sci-fi, mainstream or literary fiction, and occasionally into poetry. Some of her stories have previously been published by 365 Tomorrows, Every Day Fiction and Flash Frontier, and in the anthology, Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (Canterbury University Press, 2018). For more stories, check out her website.

Leonard Kress has published in Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review and more. Recent collections include Walk Like Bo Diddley, Living in the Candy Store and Craniotomy Sestinas. His new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz, was  published in 2018. 

Kerry Lane is a loose aggregation of neuroses that coalesced mostly in Ōtepoti Dunedin, now living near Glasgow. Current projects include a dystopian science fiction novel and a one-act play about climate and a kelpie, and attempting to grow tomatoes despite the best efforts of the Scottish climate.

Kate Mahony’s short fiction has been widely published in New Zealand and internationally and been shortlisted and longlisted in international competitions; her short story ‘Respect’ was longlisted in the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. katemahonywriter.com

Caoimhe McKeogh is currently working on a PhD in Creative Writing at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University. She has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland, including Landfall, Overland, Turbine, Starling, Cordite, Meniscus and The Blue Nib. Caoimhe has been a member of the Headland journal editorial team since 2018.

Heather McQuillan writes short stories, even shorter stories and poems. Her collection of flash fiction Where Oceans Meet was published by Reflex Press in 2019. Heather also writes for young readers and is the director of Write On School for Young Writers in Christchurch.

Mikaela Nyman was born in the autonomous, demilitarised Åland Islands in Finland and lives in Taranaki. Her latest poetry can be found in World Literature Today, Landfall 244, The Spinoff Friday poem, the climate change anthology No Other Place to Stand (AUP, 2022), and Trasdemar (in Spanish translation). Nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020 for her first Swedish-language poetry collection När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets (Ellips, 2019). Her poem ‘Fem år senare’ was set to music by Finnish composer Peter Hägerstrand as part of the Åland Islands’ centenary celebrations 2022 and will be released as an album in February 2023. Co-editor of Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (THWUP, 2021). Her first novel Sado was published by THWUP in 2020. Her second poetry collection in Swedish is forthcoming in 2023.

Emma Phillips is a teacher, writer and mum from Devon, UK. Her work has appeared in print and online in various places, including  the Bath Flash Fiction Award and Best Microfiction 2022, and  longlisted by Reflex Fiction. 

Hayden Pyke was raised in the Waikato though currently lives with his family on the ancestral whenua of Te Kawerau a Maki, Auckland. He’s been writing poetry and short fiction late at night for a while now. You can find it in publications like Landfall, takahē and Mayhem as well as written in spaghetti bolognese at abandoned bus stops.

Dominic Reed is a 30-year-old who recently moved to London to work as a Children’s Health Researcher after 8 years living and working in Glasgow. His fiction has been published in Thi Wurd. He was also shortlisted for the 2020 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and won third prize in the 2021 Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Prize.

Reihana Robinson is a writer and artist and organic farmer living on the Coromandel in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her writing has been published in the USA and New Zealand in a number of journals including Landfall, Cutthroat, Hawai’i Review, Trout, Melusine, JAAM, takahē, Cezanne’s Carrot and Blackmail Press. Her poems have appeared as part of AUP New Poets 3, Auckland University Press, 2008 and her first volume of poetry was published by Steele Roberts. She has been featured many times in Flash Frontier and her work is forthcoming in the anthology A Kind of Shelter (MUP 2023).

Nelly Sanchez has been making cut-outs for more than ten years. She has been published in journals such as Mung Being, Sonic Boom, Le Pan des Muses and Temporel. She has also participed in exhibitions: in 2012 (Paris) 'Femmes/Hommes. Stéréotypes à l’oeuvre', galerie ABB (Belleville, Paris); in 2013, at Pézenas (Hérault, France) and in 2014 at Mestre (Italia) – 'Quand saro più grande', La Casa della Renna- and Dieppe (Seine-Maritime, France). She has also illustrated writings like La Falaise était nue (Bernard Baritaud), the American translation of Venus in fur (2014). She can be found at her website and Instagram.

Sadie Scotch has been published in The Smart Set and Fertility Road Magazine.

Donna Shanley was born in New Zealand, but now lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada. She studied literature and languages at Simon Fraser University and then wild orangutans in Borneo. Her flash fiction has appeared in Vestal Review.

Amber Silverman began her career as an English teacher in the Boston area. In 2008, she moved to New York City and has worked in publishing ever since. She now enjoys life in the suburbs with her husband and two daughters. She has been writing fiction and poetry through it all. 

J. Iner Souster is a painter of landscapes and portraiture, a sculptor who creates musical instruments out of reclaimed materials, metal dresses from handspun metal, and a collection of upcycled FauxBots. He's also a photographer, musician, illustrator and mixed media artist. His writing has appeared in Spillwords, Friday Flash Fiction, 100 Word Project, The Drabble, and 101 Word Stories.

Rachael Taylor is a writer and artist living in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her work has appeared in Landfall and takahē.

Gary Thomson lives in Ontario, where in his rec moments he riffs blues and Beatles on his Hohner harmonica and reads medieval and Ancient Greek history.

Rob Walton is from Scunthorpe, England, and now lives in Whitley Bay. He writes poems, flash fictions and short stories for adults and children and his work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines. Arachne Press published his debut poetry collection, This Poem Here, in 2021. He has also written scripts and a pathway. Twitter and Instagram: @robwaltonwriter.

Susan Wardell is an academic and writer from Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry, essays, reviews and prose have been published widely, and she has achieved recognition in the Landfall Essay Competition (2018, 2021), NZPS International Poetry Competition (2019, 2020, 2021), NZ National Flash Fiction Day competitions (2019, 2020, 2021) and SHA International Ethnographic Poetry Competition (2020).

Digby Webster is a visual and performing artist. He works across a range of disciplines with extensive and varied dance and performance experience. Read our interview with Digby here.

Aine Whelan-Kopa is fascinated by insects and their contribution to the bio-diversity of Aotearoa and her imaginary stories. Aine has had work previously published with Flash Frontier for National Flash Fiction Day 2022.

Marjory Woodfield is a New Zealander who’s lived in the Middle East. She’s been published by the BBC, Orbis, The Alchemy Spoon, Flash Frontier and others. She was second in the 2022 NFFD Micro Madness Competition and highly commended in the Erbacce International Poetry Prize. She’s been anthologized by Frogmore Press (Pale Fire), Sonder Press (Best Small Fictions) and Bath Flash Fiction (with one eye on the cows).

Jenny Woodhouse began to write seriously after she retired and studied creative writing with the Open University. She has published in Flashflood, National Flash Fiction Day UK and other anthologies. She has been longlisted, shortlisted and every-way-listed.

Six of Susan York’s short stories have been published in various anthologies and a journal. Last year, Midnight Street Press published her novelette, On the Cusp of Sleep. The same publisher has recently released Susan’s story collection, Starless and Bible Black.