“Look Who’s Talking: Exploring Wildly Unconventional Points of View” Three Hour Pre Festival workshop 2.00-5.00 pm Friday 17th July with Kathy Fish

(Note:This workshop is separate from the main weekend package. Book via the registration form.Booking 2026

Ever feel like your stories are well-crafted—but somehow familiar? Like you’re doing
everything “right” and still not surprising yourself, editors, or readers? Point of view may be the
missing lever. Flash fiction thrives on bold choices, and nothing vivifies a short piece faster than
an unexpected perspective. In this immersive three-hour workshop, we’ll dive into nine unusual
points of view—some rarely taught, some delightfully strange, and some that can instantly
unlock character, tension, and emotional depth. We’ll:
• Examine published flash that takes daring POV risks—and why it works
• Discuss how unconventional perspective shapes character psychology and conflict
• Write to playful, challenging prompts aimed at generating drafts and skill building
You’ll generate multiple new drafts or story starts, and likely stumble into approaches you’ll
want to use again and again. Perfect for writers who feel stuck, stale, or ready to level up
their flash with risk and originality.

Let’s Play! Creative Games For Sparking Fresh Ideas: with Kathy Fish

(this workshop is on Saturday at the festival and repeated on Sunday
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
—Pablo Picasso
If writing has started to feel heavy, overthought, or joyless, this session is your reset button. I’ve
always believed we learn best, and write our most surprising work, through play. This fast-
paced, highly generative workshop will use creative games and brainstorming techniques to
shake loose new ideas, quiet the inner critic, and reconnect you with curiosity and delight. Think
sandbox energy, artistic mischief, and permission to try anything. You’ll leave with a stack of
new ideas, unexpected drafts, and renewed creative momentum—plus tools you can return to
whenever writing starts to feel stuck or serious. Ideal for writers craving fresh ideas, renewed
joy, and a reminder of why they fell in love with flash fiction in the first place.

Kathy Fish’s stories have been widely published in journals, anthologies, and textbooks. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Guernica, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Denver Quarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, the Norton Reader, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America (2023). She has been honored with a Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize and multiple appearances in both the Wigleaf Top 50 and the Best Small Fictions series. The author of five short fiction collections, Fish teaches a variety of writing workshops online. She also publishes a bestselling craft newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, which was recently named one of the 20 Best Creative Writing Substacks by Writers at Work. Her writing has been generously supported by fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Kerouac Project.

Reach for the Stars

Even very short fiction can resonate far and touch personal, family, local community, national, international, universal and philosophical levels. In this hour-long morning workshop, we’ll look at examples of how writers have successfully expanded their stories, to give multiple meanings in very few words and we’ll attempt to draft a far reaching piece.

Jude Higgins creates the programmes for, and directs both the online and in person Flash Fiction Festivals UK. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015, has co-run The Bath Short Story Award since 2013 and directs the short-short fiction press, Ad Hoc fiction. Her flash fiction has won or been placed in many awards and she is widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her flash fiction chapbook ‘The Chemist’s House’ was published in 2017 by V. Press and her flashfiction collection Clearly Defined Clouds was published in July, 2024.

Smirk, Grin and Chuckle: Humour in Prose Poetry: with Carrie Etter

Details coming soon

Carrie Etter has published five collections of poetry, most recently Grief’s Alphabet (Seren, 2024), and a chapbook of flash fiction, as well as many essays and reviews. Individual works have appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic,The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other journals and anthologies internationally, and she has been awarded grants from Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and The Society of Authors. She has taught creative writing in further education since 1992 and in UK universities since 2003.

Does A Story Need Conflict To Work? Rethinking the ‘golden rule’ of narrative. with K. M. Elkes

This workshop challenges the long-held belief that every story must centre on conflict. Questioning whether the term itself is too blunt and drama-driven—especially for short forms—we’ll explore how tension, movement, and meaning can emerge through quieter, subtler forces. Through discussion and writing exercises, we’ll experiment with alternatives to traditional ideas of conflict and consider how small shifts, contrasts, and moments of imbalance can power compelling, resonant flash fiction.

K.M. Elkes is the author of the short fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction). His flash stories have also won various competitions, including Bath Flash Fiction Award, Reflex Fiction Prize, and the Fish Flash Prize. He is a Pushcart and Best Microfictions nominee.
He has been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and individual short stories have been successful in the Manchester Fiction Prize, Bridport Prize, and the Royal Society of Literature Prize. His latest short story was commissioned by the BBC in 2025, for broadcast on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
His work has appeared in numerous literary anthologies and journals, and featured on school curricula in the USA and Hong Kong.He has an MA Creative Writing (Distinction) from Oxford Brookes University, and has run writing workshops at the Working Class Writers Festival, Exeter Literary Festival and Bath Flash Fiction Festival. He’s also guest-lectured at Bath Spa University and Sheffield Hallam University, where his book was on an MA Creative Writing course.

HIDDEN RIVERS: Writing the Underground with Susmita Bhattacharya

Beneath our streets, the water still moves.

In cities shaped by rapid urbanisation, many rivers have been forced underground. Buried, diverted, silenced. In Bristol, the rivers Frome and Malago flow largely out of sight. In London, more than twenty lost rivers run beneath the pavements and tube lines. Though hidden, these waterways continue to shape the cities above them, carrying memory, myth and forgotten stories.

HIDDEN RIVERS is a collaborative workshop inspired by these submerged landscapes. Using mapping prompts, we’ll create an imagined town built over its own underground river system, developing setting, characters and urban myths together before writing a series of short, interconnected flash pieces. 

A playful, place-based session celebrating flash fiction as something fluid, collective and alive.

Come and listen for what’s still flowing underneath.

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian writer living in Winchester, UK. The Normal State of Mind (Parthian) was longlisted at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2018. Her short story collection, Table Manners (Dahlia Publishing) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She is co-founder of the ACE-funded ‘Write Beyond Borders Mentoring Programme’ and ‘Bridges not Borders’ project. She is a multidisciplinary artist who does several projects in schools and the community in the Solent region and has co-edited Flash Fusion: An Anthology of Flash Fiction & Conversations on Craft by South Asian Writers.
BlueSky: Susmitab.bsky.social Instagram: Susmita_b_writer

The Whisper and the Roar: Writing on Water: with Judy Darley

How do you write about water? Does it trickle? Surge? Roar?

Is it hungry? Playful? Volatile? Reflective? Tranquil?

Whether you write about a raindrop or an ocean, you can harness water as a powerful writing muse.

This is an element we can’t breathe, yet which we’re constantly drawn to. Water has moods and magic, mirroring light and being whipped up by storms. It’s unpredictability makes every swim, sail or even shoreline stroll a risk or an adventure. Who can guess what’s hiding below the surface?

Judy Darley will ease you into the theme of water with creative prompts, generative writing exercises, and plenty of time to write.

Judy Darley lives on England’s North Somerset coast where the world’s second-highest tidal range reshapes rocky shores and reinvents the sea views daily. She is the author of short fiction collections The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Her fiction has been published globally, including in Best Small Fictions 2025. She has shared her stories on BBC radio, aboard boats and on coastal paths, as well as in caves, a deconsecrated church and artists’ studios. Judy has been a co-judge of Clevedon LitFest’s Flash Fiction Award since 2024. Find Judy at https://bsky.app/profile/judydarley.bsky.social and https://judydarley.wordpress.com

The personal is political: finding relevance and resonance in our everyday lives: with Shelley Roche-Jacques

The personal is political’ is a feminist slogan and a powerful idea tied to the civil rights movement and student activism. It makes us think about how personal experience connects to larger social and historical forces and about how we might challenge norms and push back against the status quo.
In this workshop, we’ll explore how our own experiences — no matter how everyday or seemingly small — can inspire writing that makes bold and important statements. We’ll read and talk about short, subtly political pieces, then use them as inspiration to craft our own surreptitiously powerful stories.

Shelley Roche-Jacques is a writer, teacher and researcher of short fiction and poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals such as Litro, Brevity, Flash: the International short-short story magazine, and The Boston Review. Her collections Ripening Dark and Risk the Pier are comprised of poems in the form of dramatic monologue. Her short fiction has been highly commended in the Bridport Prize, shortlisted for the Fish Prize, and she recently won first prize in the Bath Flash Fiction Award.

Art & Flash: with Anika Carpenter

Art has been inspiring writers for thousands of years, from Homer to Keats, Max Porter to Donna Tartt, powerful imagery has conjured great writing. But what of the people behind these images, the artists creating work in response to the life and times they were born into. What place might their aims and experiences have in ekphrastic writing?

In this workshop we’ll look at the motivations, motifs and techniques of one contemporary artist, and explore how art appreciation can conjure exciting and unexpected stories. There will be three featured artworks each with optional prompts.

Anika Carpenter is a flash fiction author and artist based in Brighton, UK. You can find her stories in Gooseberry Pie, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, The Disappointed Housewife and others.
Anika holds a first-class master’s degree in fine art and has worked for some of the UK’s best-known artists. You kind find details of her monthly online ekphrastic workshops via her website.
Website: www.anikacarpenter.com BlueSky: @stillsquirrel.bsky.social

Writing the Unexpected in Flash (how to upend cliches and make it strange)

In flash fiction, every word builds expectation which makes it the perfect form to surprise the reader by not giving them what they expect. In this joyful, hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how to upend clichés and make the familiar strange by twisting what readers assume will come next. Through examples, playful brainstorming, and creative prompts, you’ll learn how to craft the unexpected using character, point of view, and narrative turns.

Finnian Burnett is a writer, educator, and champion of creative chaos. Their work explores the glorious mess of human identity, gender, bodies, and mental health. Finnian’s work appears in Writer’s Digest, Geist, CBC Books, and Pulp Literature. Their first novella-in-flash, The Clothes Make the Man shortlisted for the Bath NIF prize and subsequent novellas-in-flash, The Price of Cookies and Redshirts Sometimes Survive, are available from Off Topic Publishing. When not writing or teaching, Finnian can be found collecting rocks, watching Star Trek, or enjoying cat memes with ridiculous devotion.

National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Readings hosted by Diane Simmons, Ingrid Jendzrejewski and Karen Jones

This session will take place in the Dining Room for the whole assembly on Sunday mornning

How can you write to a theme for an anthology and make it stand out from the crowd? Directors of National Flash Fiction Day UK, Diane Simmons and Ingrid Jendrzejewski and anthology editor Karen Jones will talk about how writers did this in the latest NFFD anthology on the theme of ‘Bridges’ You’ll also hear some of this year’s authors read their anthology flash fictions.
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Diane Simmons is Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day, UK. Widely published in magazines such as New Flash Fiction Review, Mslexia, Splonk and FlashBack Fiction and placed in numerous writing competitions, she is the author of five novellas-in-flash: Finding a Way (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019 ), An Inheritance (V. Press, 2020), A Tricky Dance (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), William Prichard & Co (Arroyo Seco Press, 2024) and Bereft of Reason (forthcoming from V. Press in 2026). She has twice been shortlisted in The Saboteur Awards. She is a regular judge for Flash 500 and the online Flash Fiction Festival competitions and has co-edited all eight Flash Fiction Festival anthologies. You can read more about Diane on her website: www.dianesimmons.co.uk and connect with her on Bluesky @scootewriter.bsky.social

Karen Jones is a flash and short fiction writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story ‘Small Mercies’ was included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and second prize in Fractured Lit’s Micro Fiction Competition. Her work has been Highly Commended/shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction and Bath Short Story Award and many more. Her novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction and her ekphrastic novella in flash, Burn it All Down by Arroyo Seco Press

Creative Visualisation Session: with Karen Jones

A visualisation workshop based on the original method created by writer and creative writing tutor Zoe King. With your eyes closed, I’ll lead you through a scenario, with specific emphasis on the senses, and then you carry on with the story – or whatever the visualisation triggers in your mind. Visualisations can tap into deep feelings and memories, so be prepared to write whatever comes to you, no filter.

Writing with the Whole Body: with Ingrid Jendzrejewski

What happens when we let the body lead—and invite the inner editor to take a seat?
In this playful, generative workshop, we’ll use simple, body-based prompts to write past habit and into fresher, stranger, more surprising material. We’ll try short exercises that tune into sensation, movement, breath, and posture, then translate what we notice onto the page through quick, low-stakes drafts. Expect experiments, not perfection—and plenty of options for how you participate.
You’ll leave with new starts, fragments, and a small toolkit of practices you can return to whenever your work feels stuck or overly “polished.”
Suitable for writers of all experience levels. Prompts may include gentle movement, with options offered throughout. Please feel free to share any access needs or movement considerations with me in advance, so I can shape a positive, inspiring session for every body in attendance.

Ingrid Jendrzejewski[/caption]Ingrid Jendrzejewski is a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day. She was a flash editor at JMWW, and has served as both non-fiction editor and editor-in-chief of the Evansville Review. She has published over 100 shortform pieces and has won multiple flash fiction competitions, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for BFFA’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Vestal Review’s VERA Award, and multiple times for Best Small Fictions.

The Historical Novella in Flash: Panel discussion hosted by Fiona J Mackintosh with Jupiter Jones and Diane Simmons

The panel, who have all written one or more historical NIFS. will talk about the challenges of writing one, its rewards, research and different roads to publication. (See Diane Simmons bio above)

Fiona J. Mackintosh is a Scottish-American author living in Washington D.C. whose fiction draws from both sides of the Atlantic. Her flash fiction collection, The Yet Unknowing World was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021, and her debut novel Ancestral Virgins will be published in three volumes in June 2026. She was highly commended in the 2026 Bath Flash Novella in Flash Award with her historical novella, Beautiful for Youbased on the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. She can be found on @fionajanemack.bsky.social and as @fionajanemack on X, Instagram, and Threads. And more of her work can be found on her website: www.fionajmackintosh.com

Jupiter Jones lives in Wales and writes short stuff. Her flash has been published by Ad Hoc, Underbelly, TrashCat, National Flash Fiction Day, Scottish Arts Trust, and Best Small Fictions. She is the winner of the Philip Hoare Prize for CNF flash and the Colm Tóibín Short Story Prize. Her most recent novella, The Hyena’s Daughter, published by Weatherglass Books is set in the early nineteenth-century and tells the story of Fanny Imlay, her half sister Mary Shelley and their step sister Claire Clairemont.

Life in Fragments: Using flash for longer form CNF: with Marie Gethins

“how many fragments of ourselves were scattered, as if to live were to explode into splinters” — Elena Ferrante
Essay chapters is the standard approach for memoir/CNF. Yet, we live in brief moments that are coloured by memories. Flash techniques of layering, hermit crab, erasure, metaphor and fragmentation offer tremendous scope to longer form CNF. In this 90-minute workshop we will consider Claire Wilcox’s Patch Work, Tania Hershman’s Go On and It’s Time, and Cristín Leach’s Negative Space discussing how these authors utilise a flash approach for a unified, long CNF text and we will generate some new non-fiction flash of our own.

Marie Geth­ins featured in Winter Papers, Bristol Short Story Award, Australian Book Review, NFFD Anthologies, Banshee, Fictive Dream, Pure Slush, Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies, and others. Selected for Best Microfictions, BIFFY50, Best Small Fictions, she edits for flash ezine Splonk, critiques for Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. She has won or been placed in many Awards including Reflex Fiction, TSS, The Bristol Short Story Prize, Bath Short Story Award. Flash Fiction Festival Online. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Hurt So Good: Sex and emotional vulnerability in Flash Fiction
with Sara Hills

Writing about sex doesn’t have to be icky, mechanical, or groan-worthy. In this generative workshop we’ll explore the interplay of sexual situations and emotional vulnerability in relation to self, family, and culture. We’ll use example stories and craft techniques to uncover strategies for going deeper in our work and employ writing prompts designed to get those creative juices flowing. Bring an open mind, a sense of humor, and a willingness to play on the page.

Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for best story collection. Her flash-length stories have been taught internationally in schools and workshops as well as widely published in anthologies and journals. She has won the SmokeLong Quarterly micro contest, Bath Flash Fiction Award, QuietManDave flash nonfiction prize, National Flash Fiction Day micro contest, and the Retreat West quarterly prize. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, England. Find her online at sarahillswrites.com.

‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Flash: Anecdotes in Very Short Fiction: with David Swann

A focus on how facts get bent by fiction. Dave is really interested in the (tricky!) relationship between anecdotes and flash, and by Marianne Moore’s wise reflection on ‘real toads in imaginary gardens’ He will talk on this subject and then offer some exercises to invite the bending of facts.

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David Swann’s Season of Bright Sorrow (Ad Hoc Fiction) won the 2021 Bath Novella-in-Flash Competition, and was named Rubery Book of the Year in 2023. Another novella, The Twisted Wheel, finished runner-up in the 2022 Bath competition. His stories and poems have won many awards (including eleven at The Bridport Prize and two in the National Poetry Competition). His collection The Privilege of Rain (Waterloo Press, 2010), about his residency in a prison, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize. After many years as a university lecturer, Dave now works at Cumbria University as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and is busy with a commission from the National Literacy Trust to write a community poem for his beloved Blackburn Rovers!

Weird, Wonderful and What Can Possibly Go Wrong?: With Vanessa Gebbie

Create a few new weird flashes to surprise and delight and check out some common flash errors.

Vanessa will also offer The Biggest Game of Word Cricket in the Whole Wide World
Our traditional Saturday morning half-hour warm-up session for the whole assembly in the dining room.

Vanessa Gebbie has won multiple awards for both prose and poetry, including a Bridport Prize and the Troubadour. Her flash publications include Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures (Liquorice Fish Books) and the weird/irreal collection Nothing to Worry About (Flash: The International Short Short Story Press at Chester University) 2018 as well as many individual publications online and in print. She is author of three short story collections (with Salt and Cultured Llama), a novel (Bloomsbury), and two poetry publications (Pighog and Cultured Llama). She is also commissioning and contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). She teaches widely.

The Fabric of Character: Developing psychology of character via sensory stimuli.with Stephanie Carty

We will use the properties of a range of fabric, papers and fibres to help develop components of characters, perhaps not in the way you might expect… Bring new depth and variation to the people on the page through playful exercises.

(Inclusion note – this class will involve non-literal thinking, pair work, and either touching or viewing materials, based on preference).

Stephanie Carty is a writer and clinical psychologist in the UK. Her short fiction is widely published and placed in competitions. Her novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone won a Saboteur Award and her short fiction collection The Peculiarities of Yearning won an Eyelands Book Award. Her novella in flash Spin of the Triangle was a runner-up in the 2025 Bath Novella in Flash Award and was published by Ad Hoc Fction in 2025. She has published two psychological suspense novels and two writers’ guides – Inside Fictional Minds on the psychology of character and The Writing Mirror on analysing your writing to better understand yourself. stephaniecarty.bsky.social.

Still Lives: Exploring stillness, movement and resonance in flash fiction: with Farhana Khalique

How do writers use stillness versus movement to create resonance in their stories? What makes a quiet scene unfold and come alive? And how can we find quiet in the chaos of a more active scene? In this workshop, we’ll use the forces of nature as inspiration for creating more resonant pieces of flash fiction. We’ll generate ideas, discuss examples of published flash, and write new pieces of our own. All welcome!

Farhana Khalique is a writer, editor, voice over artist, teacher, and PhD candidate from south-west London, UK. Her writing appears in Flash Fusion, Tales from the City, Best Small Fictions, and more. She’s judged the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, is a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, and she’s a writing tutor at City Lit. Find Farhana online @HanaKhalique and www.farhanakhalique.com

From Zero to Nifty in Sixty Minutes: with Fiona McKay

So, you have an idea for a Novella-in-Flash, and you’re not sure how to find the way in? This workshop will take a look at some different approaches to help you take that idea, that short story, that cluster of flashes you have and write it into a cohesive NiF. We will look at structure – is what you’re thinking about or writing a NiF? Or is it a novella? Or a collection? What makes a NiF different to these? How do you construct a timeline for your NiF? What does your narrative arc look like?
Participants will finish with a clear plan for how to move forward with their work.

Fiona McKay is the author of the novellas-in-flash, The Lives of the Dead, Ad Hoc Fiction (2025), The Top Road, Ad Hoc Fiction (2023), and the flash fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). Her most recent NIF, Her Permanent Collection is highly commended in the Bath flash Novella in Flash Award, 2026. She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow in 2023. Her flash fiction is in Pithead Chapel, The Forge, trampset, Fractured Lit and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and is addicted to writing Novellas-in-Flash.

This Is Not Just a Key – Writing Micro & Flash Through Everyday Objects: with Nora Nadjarian

In this generative workshop, we’ll explore how ordinary, everyday objects can become powerful engines for microfiction and flash. A chipped mug, a bus ticket, a house key, a grocery list—these small, overlooked items carry histories, secrets, and emotional charge. We will also explore how mundane tasks – washing a dish, locking a door – can add meaning to compressed fiction. Through guided prompts and reading examples, participants will learn how to use ordinary objects and actions as entry points into character, conflict, and voice, transforming the unremarkable into resonant stories.

Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. She has been commended or placed in numerous competitions, including the Reflex Fiction Flash Fiction Competition and the Mslexia Poetry Competition (2021). Her work was included in Europa 28 (Comma Press, 2020) and she represented Cyprus in the Hay Festival’s Europa28: Visions for the Future in 2020. Her short fiction has appeared, among others, in Sand Journal, FRiGG, MoonPark Review, Lunate, Ellipsis Zine, Milk Candy Review and was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2022 (selected by Kathy Fish). She has led successful creative writing workshops for the Flash Fiction Festival, the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Beyond Form, Flash Cabin, Retreat West, as well as the Bonington Gallery and Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre. 

Theres is a Crack in Everything: Exploring Fractured Narratives:with Emily Devane

There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in. (Leonard Cohen)

In this interactive workshop, Emily Devane will look at the potential for stories in broken things: whether that’s the cracks in a pavement slab, the fissures in a relationship, or the possibilities of telling stories from the shattered fragments that remain. There’s so much beauty to be had in fractured narratives. The workshop will be filled with examples to inspire you, and plenty of prompts to get the ideas flowing.

Emily Devane is a writer, editor, bookseller and teacher based in Ilkley, West Yorkshire. She has taught workshops and courses for Comma Press, Dahlia Press, London Writers’ Café and Tracks Darlington. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Northern Writers’ Award and a Word Factory Apprenticeship. Emily’s work has been published in Smokelong Quarterly (third place, Grand Micro Contest 2021), Best Microfictions Anthology (2021), New Flash Fiction Review, Lost Balloon, Ellipsis, New Flash Fiction Review, Janus Literary, Ambit and others. She was a founding editor at FlashBack Fiction. She was shortlisted for the prestigious Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing, and also won second place in the Bath Short Story Award. Emily runs regular spoken word nights and teaches at Moor Words.

Another episode from 52 Stories for readers and writers: with Rosaleen Lynch

In this popular workshop, Rosaleen will again take us through some stories and exercises from her collection/workbook; a year of themed weekly reading and writing practice for individuals or groups.

Rosaleen Lynch is an Irish youth and community worker and writer in the East End of London with words in a number of journals, including New Flash Fiction Review, HAD, Fractured Lit, Craft, SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, EllipsisZine, Mslexia, Litro and Fish, and has been shortlisted by Bath Short Story Award, Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Bridport Prize, is a winner of the HISSAC Flash Fiction Competition and the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize.

Paper, Scissors and Glue: Make a Zine of Your Work

Enough writing, it’s time to make! In this fun, practical session, participants will choose a story from a previous workshop to turn into a zine, a tradition of DIY publication. We’ll experiment with various formats and folds, look at examples and learn what zines are and why they matter, especially now. Participants will get to grips with this cheap, immediate and increasingly popular form, and make at least one zine to take away with them.

Heidi Clark is a Japanese-to-English literary translator, zine-maker and co-founder of the Translators’ House Press. She writes, makes and publishes work which illuminates the role of the translator and experiments with form. Her translation of Nakanishi Morina’s essay Dried Seaweed at Midnight is published in Asymptote Journal. She holds an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia.

Heavenly Mud: a drawing and writing workshop with Jet Rotmans

In this early morning hour-long session, Jet will supply art materials and instructions for you to research the beautiful and the ugly in another medium. (Wax crayons). Looking between the lines of your drawings, Jet will invite you to create your own writing prompts from this new source.

Jet Rotmans is an exhibiting and performance artist from Zutphen in The Netherlands. For many years she was an ambassador in an arts twinning project between Zutphen and Shrewsbury U.K. She has a writing diploma (2004) and has published several books of poetry including two translated into English, Black Stork .which was launched in the bookshop at The Flash Fiction Festival, 2023 (pictured here) and Ten Business Lessons with a Wink She holds a Masters degree in psychology and was a Gestalt Therapist working with groups and individuals from 1984 until recently. She has cared for sheep since 2013 an£ often draws them.

The Ripple Effect: How to Use Negative Space to Expand Your Flash: with David Schuman

This workshop borrows from visual art to investigate the concept of “negative space.” What exists between the lines and beyond the boundaries of the page? How can a writer hint at the past and future and gesture into the larger space and world of a narrative? We’ll explore these ideas using examples from classic and contemporary flash fiction and some generative in-workshop writing prompts.

David Schuman is the director of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared in Catapult, Fence, Conjunctions, The Rumpus, and many other publications. His work has been anthologized, most recently in Walking on Lava: Selected Works for Uncivilized Times, published by the Dark Mountain Project. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship and has twice had stories listed as “distinguished” in the Best American series. His prose chapbook, Best Men, was published by Tammy Press.

Roberta Beary

How to Haibun: with Roberta Beary

Flash memoir, fractured fairytale, epistolary/diary fragment, and dream sequence all encompass aspects of contemporary global haibun. A form of prose poem which includes haiku and micro-poetry, haibun continues to evolve and reinvent itself. How to Haibun will explore what makes a good haibun, including how the holy trinity of haibun: title, prose, and haiku, link and resonate. Participants will learn writing techniques emphasising multilayered titles, succinct prose, and evocative micro-poetry. This one-hour workshop will inspire both haibun first-timers and seasoned practitioners.

Roberta Beary (they/she) identifies as gender fluid, and writes to connect with the silenced, to let them know they are not alone. After 60 rejections, their prose poem ‘After You Self Medicate with Roethke’s The Waking Read by Text to Speech App’ won the Bridport Prize. Their work appears in The New York Times (Modern Love/Tiny Love Stories), Rattle, and 100 Word Story. She co-wrote the craft guide ‘Haibun – A Writer’s Guide Ad Hoc Fiction 2023 with Lew Watts and n Rich Youmans.The longtime haibun editor at Modern Haiku, she travels the world as Roving Ambassador for The Haiku Foundation.

Reading like a Writer: with Alison Woodhouse

Presumably writers read because they enjoy it, otherwise why would they want to write? But beyond the pleasure, what can we, as writers, learn from close reading, about craft? Do we keep a journal? A reading diary? Are we consciously ‘learning’ when we read? If not, why not? Will raising our awareness ruin our pleasure? I love ‘disappearing’ into a story but I also believe a critical awareness of form and craft is important for any writer so if you truly have been ‘lost’ in a work of fiction, come back to it a second time with your writer’s eye. In this workshop we will close read a selection of flash stories and discuss craft questions in pairs/small groups, in order to deepen our appreciation of the stories and recognize the artistic decisions made by the authors; how the use of ‘tools’ such as metaphor and symbolism, playful or clever structure, surprising word choices, punctuation, create the meaning and impact of the story. We will discuss ways we can use this study of craft in the all-important editing stage. We will also look at how to frame a series of questions to ask of our own work, creating resonance and depth.

Alison Woodhouse is a writer, teacher and mentor based in the Southwest, currently in her 3rd year of a funded PhD in Creative Writing, exploring polyphony. In 2026, she was awarded a UKRI fellowship to conduct 3-month archival research into the writing process of contemporary authors, including Kazio Ishiguro and Rachel Cusk, at Texas University, Austin. Her short fiction has won a number of competitions, most recently Mslexia, and many other pieces have been placed or shortlisted and are widely published both in print and online. Her debut Novella in Flash, The House on the Corner, was published in 2020 by Ad Hoc Fiction and her flash fiction collection, Family Frames, was published in 2021 by V Press.

This Mad and Furious World: Writing flash fiction in the shadow of global events: with Alison Powell

Flash fiction often distils the relationship between individual lives and the wider historical moment. In this generative workshop, we will examine flash fiction pieces in which major political and social events – the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of George Floyd, the 2025 Los Angeles riots, among others – operate not merely as context but as active narrative pressures. Through close discussion and guided prompts, you will reflect on events that have shaped your own sense of time and place, and consider how large-scale histories reverberate through the smallest human moments. You will produce several new drafts and develop strategies for drawing on the mad and furious world around us as a generative resource that you can delve into long after the workshop has ended.

Alison Powell is a writer and teacher who believes the world is a better place when we allow ourselves to create. Her fiction has been long- and short-listed in numerous contests (Mslexia, Writer’s HQ, Reflex and TSS, amongst others) won the local author prize in the Bath Short Story Award, runner-up places in Flash 500 and the Bridport Prize and won the June 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Award. She co-edited the 2018 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and has been published in a growing pile of anthologies, magazines and online publications. She runs writing workshops and supports a global community of writers through her venture WriteClub. Find her on Insta/FB: @hellowriteclub or via www.writeclub.org.uk

Isolation is your flash friend: with Gillian O’Shaughnessy

Writing from the world’s most isolated major city, GillianO’Shaughnessy places her characters in her beloved port city ofFremantle and the rugged outback of Western Australia to explore setting and identity in flash fiction writing. Whether you write from the city, towns or country, this generative workshop will show you how setting can be used to deepen the emotional engagement of flash fiction and propel the story forward.

Gillian O’Shaughnessy is one of Australia’s most celebrated flash fiction writers and a highly respected journalist and presenter. Her work has been widely published, winning international prizes and featuring in the Best Small Fictions, (2023–2025). Gillian spent 25 years as a presenter and reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has interviewed some of the world’s most prominent authors and public figures, including the late Dame Hilary Mantel, Marian Keyes, Helen Garner, Anna Funder and Sir Ian McKellan, among others. Gillian is a sub-editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, teaches masterclasses in flash fiction, and is serving as a 2026 Australian Stella Prize judge. Salt City Runaway is Gillian’s first book. She lives in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Creating a flash fiction collection: getting your work out there: with Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

In this workshop, we’ll dig into the world of flash fiction publishing—exploring chapbooks to full collections. Through group discussion and hands-on activities, we’ll figure out what makes sense for your work, as well as diving into the history of the chapbook as a way of unpicking our own motives for publishing. I’ll share my process of collating a collection through to publishing ‘Cold Toast’, with insights on bookselling and tips from other flash writers on how to avoid potential pitfalls. Suitable for writers wanting to publish a debut, as well as those with a follow-up collection ready to go.

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is an award-winning writer based in Bristol. Her debut flash fiction collection Cold Toast (Dahlia Books) was listed in ‘Best Small Press fiction of 2025’ and selected as Book of the Month by the Republic of Consciousness Prize, in partnership with Queen Mary University, London. Her work has appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50, Aesthetica, The Four Faced Liar, The Forge, Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Frog, Fractured Lit and elsewhere. With the support of an Arts Council England award, she has recently completed a novella. She is represented by Abi Fellows at DHH Literary Agency.