CRAFT Flash Fiction Contest
The CRAFT Flash Fiction Contest is an annual award for unpublished flash fiction up to 1,000 words, and is open to entries every September and October and awarded the following March. Three winners are selected by a guest judge, with $3,000 and publication awarded. Several pieces are selected by CRAFT editors for editors' choice.
Judges:
Let’s Say, Triptych by Steven Sherrill
Let’s say you follow her home. The barefoot girl on the corner of Union, where Nut Creek gnaws at the back steps of a church and the struggling crisis center. She cuts her own hair, with garden clippers. Let’s…
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We’re All Just Trying to Keep Our Shit Together at the DMV by L Mari Harris
The woman sitting in front of me loudly whispers in her crying baby’s ear, “Sobby Robby, stop it. Shut up, Sobby Robby.” There’s a glob of hard dirt stuck below her right ear. Or maybe it’s a birthmark. Her…
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Adapted from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Definitions of “Rock” by Audrey Bauman
rock verb \ ˈräk \ rocked; rocking; rocks transitive verb 1 : to move back and forth in or as if in a cradle Every ten years the Arkansas catfish woman emerges from her riverbed and rocks to-and-fro, lets…
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un/synced by Lisa Bass
Week of April 4, 2020 I swallowed most of a fly today at Spring Creek Park. It swept past my lips, then lodged itself into the back of my throat, launching a series of gagging coughs. A family of…
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Epilogue by Carol M. Quinn
They staggered, stunned, into the fall, she and Teddy making giant vats of pasta and vegetarian burrito dinners to feed twenty-five, inviting home everyone they knew to eat, to drink, to stay over, please, we have a futon and…
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Girls’ Weekend by Steven Simoncic
A hunk of butter hits the fry pan. Then two pieces of bologna. Sparks of grease jump and sizzle. My dad’s hands—massive, oil-stained, almost old—slash tiny gashes into the bubbles of perfectly pink meat. White bread and yellow mustard…
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How to Return Your Child to School by Hillary Smith
He’ll want the Moana one with zippers like cresting waves and straps that glisten blue plastic glitz. He’ll cry that Michelle Naylor’s mom let her buy that one in purple. You’ve only met Michelle Naylor’s mom once, at family…
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What They Didn’t Teach Us by Luke Whisnant
They taught us how to kill with assault weapons, bayonets, bare hands. They taught us the lay of the land, how to navigate by rivers and stars, how to use cover to outflank enemy operatives, how to make a…
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Old Girl by Virginia Reeves
The last time I picked Hallie up at the airport, she was wearing a ratty beige shift that would’ve been a nightshirt if not for the decorative navy rickrack at the neck. Instead of hello, she said, “You hate…
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