About

Flash Frontier had its start in 2012, in the far north of New Zealand. We have been building a community of short fiction writers, one small story at a time, ever since.

Our early issues were focused on New Zealand writers. By October 2012, we went international. Each year, some issues are devoted to writers from Aotearoa New Zealand and others welcome international submissions.

We publish quarterly. Please see the Submissions page for details.
We publish stories up to 250 words, with a special issue each year featuring National Flash Fiction Day’s winning stories (those exceed our usual 250-word limit, reaching to 300 words).
Each issue follows a theme or point of focus. Themes are posted under our Submissions guidelines.

What we like

We are looking for variety and originality. Tickle us, haunt us, gobsmack us. Choose your words carefully and leave our readers wanting more.

We also feature art in each issue. Photography, painting, drawing, art installations, sculpture – we’re open to what you have to share with us.

Submissions are open for 2023. Go to Submissions for details.

Prizes

In 2012, we awarded four quarterly prizes to writers whose flash fiction demonstrated a degree of excellence that set our standard. Since then, we have awarded two prizes per year for outstanding writing, in July and in December.

Prize-winners are selected from those writers whose works have been selected for each issue during the half-year. Each year, we also nominate stories from our pages for the Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions anthologies, as well as the Pushcart Prize.

Banner Notes

We thank our contributing artists for the banners that were featured in our first ten years. In 2022, with our new website launch, our banner has been selected from one of those previous artworks.

Anonymous Author©, 2013

Anonymous Author©, who stalks our halls and occasionally writes flash, too. In 2013, our banner was extracted from his February 2012: HEAT art ‘Asemic Continuum’, created by manipulation and play, beginning with a Shutterstock royalty-free image.

Claire Beynon, 2015

Claire Beynon, an artist, writer and independent researcher based in Dunedin, New Zealand. Claire’s ‘Honeycomb Journal’ featured in the November 2014: HEROES issue, and served as our 2015 banner. More about Claire’s work can be found here.

Graham Hughes, 2014

Graham Hughes, photographer living in Whangarei, New Zealand. Our 2014 banner image came from his contribution, ‘Buster Brown Meets the Yard’, from the February 2014: TRAVEL issue.

Keith Nunes, 2019

Keith Nunes starts with a photograph, then adds filters, chops and rearranges, crops and expands, colourises and blends, and ends up with something that doesn’t resemble what he started with. His piece ‘Primeval’, which featured in the December 2018: Antarctica Flash Frontier issue, is our 2019 banner.

Mike Perusse, 2017

Mike Perusse, photographer and visual artist from Northampton, Massachusetts. Our 2017 banner image came from his contribution, ‘Buster Brown Meets the Yard’, from the June 2016: STOLEN issue. An interview with Mike about his art and inspiration can be found on our February 2017 Feature page.

Nod Ghosh, 2018

The 2018 banner image comes from Nod Ghosh‘s painting ‘Beaten Sand’ – featured in the November 2017: CRASH issue. It was created using the ‘acrylic dirty pour’ technique, by pouring diluted paint into a cup, adding a little oil and magic, then tipping the contents onto canvas. Some of Nod’s other pours can be found here on her facebook page.

Pete Carter, 2016

Pete Carter, writer and photographer from Wellington, New Zealand. Our 2016 banner image was the colourful image of Kenyan khangas, from the December 2015: MICROS page. The photograph was taken at Diani Beach just south of Mombasa in 2013. More at his website.

Reihana Robinson, 2021

Reihana Robinson’s poetry is found in AUP New Poet 3, and her poetry collections include Aue Rona (Steele Roberts, 2012) and Her Limitless Her (Mākaro Press, 2018). She has held art residencies in Red Wing Minnesota and the East-West Center Honolulu Hawai‘i. Her painting ‘H’rizon’, which featured in the July 2020: MATARIKI issue, was our 2021 banner.

Sheila Brown, 2020

Sheila Brown is an American artist who settled by the sea in Christchurch in 1994. Her awards include the Opening Award Prize at City Gallery in the prestigious Invercargill Licensing Trust Award Exhibition in 2005 and first prize at the Otago Art Society, Dunedin, in the Gaye Rowcroft Awards exhibition in June 2009. You can view her paintings at www.sheilabrown.co.nz.