Lorraine Collins attended the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol every year since 2023 and was one of the first to book for this year’s festival in July. Last week, I heard from Jodie Collins, Lorraine’s daughter the incredibly sad news that Lorraine and her mother had been killed on March 25th 2026, from injuries sustained in a car accident. We offer deep condolences to the family for their tragic double loss. We will miss Lorraine very much at the festival. She had such a warm and lively presence and an infectious enthusiasm.

Lorraine also came to many of the online Festival days I organised and on one of the most recent days she told me with much excitement that Anne Anthony whom she had made friends with, was again attending. Lorraine was a very welcoming and friendly person. As Anne describes below, she was made to feel at home immediately when she came to Trinity College for the festival in 2024. Another writer, JP Relph, who was a newcomer last year, also wrote, on hearing the sad news, that Lorraine had made her feel very welcome too. Many others remember conversations with her in workshops, in the bookshop, outside in the grounds where Lorraine was camping and in the bar. I shall treasure the picture here someone took of me and Lorraine together to send to Anne, who couldn’t come last year. We were having fun and dancing in the bar at the karaoke entertainment at the time.

I was privileged that Lorraine came to ‘Precious Jewels;, the writing workshop I ran at last year’s festival and her story prompted by that workshop is in the 2025 Flash Fiction Festival Anthology which will be published soon. The poignant story below, which Anne Anthony gave writerly feedback on, will also be published in print in the 2026 Flash Fiction Festival anthology. I am honoured to be able to share it in her memory and hope both stories in print will offer some solace to the family.

Anne Anthony writes this about Lorraine:

“I first met Lorraine Collins when we swapped flash fiction stories to review and critique for an anthology. I mentioned during that exchange that I planned to attend the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristo for the first time and she sent me piles of travel information about London, Bristol, and the festival itself. She told me she’d make sure to track me down and introduce herself. I remember how she took me under her wing during that weekend, introducing me to one writer after another as if she were my personal guide to this unknown writing community and made me feel instantly accepted and she did all this with that wide, welcoming smile of hers. We became, as Lorraine called us, ‘pen pals’ staying in touch, cheering each other along, and I suspect, I was not the only recipient of her generous heart and boundless energy.”

She will be missed by our writing community. Her bright light has been put out too soon. One of the last pieces we’d swapped was Lorraine’s flash, ‘How Could We Not?’ which I’m sharing with the permission of her family. It’d been inspired by the Henry Martin Glasser painting, ‘Backyard Pathway’, reproduced below.

How Could We Not?

by Lorraine Collins

Yesterday, I found the painting, reminding us of our honeymoon, where the snowy hills were smooth and bright, and how at first we couldn’t find the lodge, how lying in the afterglow of our first time, so dazzled with ourselves, and so unexpectedly ravenous, we dressed to find somewhere to eat, and discovered the diner run by that old European couple who served a homemade stew—we expected burgers and fries—and we never worked out their homeland, I thought Hungary but you thought Poland we didn’t ask, believing it rude somehow and we were timid then and unknowing, how they were so loving towards each other and I said do we think that’ll be us one day, when we’ve been together forever and you said how could we not? I studied the artist’s other paintings too, withholding judgment and taking my time, keeping an open mind. One image lingered: a solitary man shuffling up a snowy street, caught between light and shade, eyes focused only on what lies ahead, and struggling. But maybe I’m projecting, overthinking it. You’d tease me about that in our other life. I am trying to understand what you are going through now, the bewilderment, when your thoughts aren’t your own, when they suffocate you in a claggy fog of confusion. One day, when you return to yourself, we’ll go there again, where we honeymooned, the snowy lodge in New England. The light is so beautiful there, the sea so unchanging, and our hearts will lift. Oh, I pray you’ll recover—you’d be surprised and laugh at my newfound faith. Your therapist holds hope for your mind, your doctor holds hope for your brain, and I hold hope for your soul. We’re a team, the perfect trinity holding hope for you. How could we not?