The International Flash Fiction Association, run by Peter Blair and Ashley Chantler, was founded in 2015 to promote flash fiction around the world.
The Association’s work includes:
Useful open-access resources created by the Association include the following webpages:
The Association has two social-media sites, to provide news about the latest in flash fiction and allow you to connect with flash-fiction authors, readers, and publishers:
- International Flash Fiction Network (Facebook)
- Flash Fiction (Twitter)
Joining the International Flash Fiction Association
Members of the Association will receive (each year during the period of their membership):
- Two copies of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine(April and October).
- A 25% discount on publications by Flash: The International Short-Short Story Press.
- A discount for any flash-related conferences and events organized by the Association.
- Occasional emails regarding significant publications, competitions, and events.
Rates per annum:
- UK £11 (Sterling)
- Europe £15 (approx. €18)
- Rest of World £18 (approx. $18 (US Dollars))
Members are encouraged to add the Association to their CVs and internet profiles.
To become a member of the International Flash Fiction Association, all you need to do is subscribe to Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine.
About the Directors
Peter Blair and Ashley Chantler are Senior Lecturers in English at the University of Chester, where they teach on the BA and MA programmes in Creative Writing and English Literature. They are the founders and editors of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Press. They have had their own flashes published in various anthologies, literary periodicals, and e-zines, have edited anthologies of flashes (as well as of short stories), and have published on the form. Ashley is editor of An Anatomy of Chester: A Collection of Short-Short Stories (Chester Academic Press, 2007), launched at the 2007 Chester Literature Festival, and his path-breaking essay ‘Notes Towards the Definition of the Short-Short Story’ appeared in The Short Story, ed. Ailsa Cox (Cambridge Scholars, 2009). He is author of the article ‘Why Flash Fiction? Because of a Parrot and a Porn Star, Of Course’, SmokeLong Quarterly (18 Aug. 2016). Peter has edited and published three student anthologies of historical flashes (That’s Historical, 2008; It’s About Time, 2009; Between the Lines, 2010) and wrote the ‘Flash Fiction’ article for the bestselling Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2016 (Bloomsbury, 2015).
They have provided blurbs and endorsements for Flash Fiction Funny, ed. Tom Hazuka (Blue Light Press, 2013),Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World, ed. James Thomas, Robert Shapard and Christopher Merrill (Norton, 2015), and Robert Scotellaro’s What We Know So Far: Micro Fiction(Blue Light Press, 2015).
In 2012, Peter and Ashley were interviewed for two pieces:
- Richard Warnica, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Short Story’, Maclean’s (19 Jan. 2012);
- Grant Faulkner,‘The Art of Flashing’,100 Word Story (April 2012).
Their interviews with two of Britain’s foremost flashers, David Gaffney and Vanessa Gebbie, were published in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice:
- ‘“A Pop Star Trapped in the Body of a Flasher”: An Interview with David Gaffney’, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 4.1 (April 2014), 125–30.
- ‘“As if on a magic carpet’: An Interview with Vanessa Gebbie’, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 4.2 (October 2014), 233-39.
Peter and Ashley have accepted invitations to judge international and regional flash fiction competitions:
- NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge (2010, 2011, 2013);
- Gladstone’s Library ‘Mystery Lady’ Competition (2013), won by Irish writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir;
- Chester Library Flash Fiction Competition (2013, 2014).
In 2013, they founded the National Flash Fiction Youth Competition, and in 2015 the International Flash Fiction Association.
About the Assistant Director
Ian Seed is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Chester, where he teaches on the BA and MA programmes in Creative Writing and English Literature, and is Chair of the Panel of Judges for the Cheshire Prize for Literature. He edited Patches of Light: Stories from The Cheshire Prize for Literature 2015 (University of Chester Press, 2016).
His creative work often navigates the borders between prose poetry and flash fiction. He has published two collections, Identity Papers (Shearsman, 2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (Shearsman, 2014), both of which were featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb in 2016. His pamphlet, Threadbare Fables, was published by Like This Press in 2012.
Ian has contributed flashes and reviews of flash-fiction collections to Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. His flashes regularly appear online in The Café Irreal and The Fortnightly Review, while his prose poems are published in journals such as PN Review,Poetry Salzburg Review, Shearsman and Tears in the Fence. His article, ‘Nonsense and Wonder: An Exploration of the Prose Poems of Jeremy Over’, was published in Tears in the Fence, 63 (Spring, 2016).
Ian’s translation from the French of Pierre Reverdy’s hybrid ‘novel’ of poetry and prose, The Thief of Talant, is published by Wakefield Press (2016).
Contact Information
International Flash Fiction Association
Department of English
University of Chester
Parkgate Road
Chester CH1 4BJ
UK
Email flash.magazine@chester.ac.uk
Directors Dr Peter Blair Dr Ashley Chantler