So thrilled to have moderated this year’s “Best Small Fictions around the world” panel for the 2026 Festival of Flash, National Flash Fiction Day NZ’s annual online celebration. Lovely author and editor Michelle Elvy invited me back after working on Best Small Fictions 2025 – and currently Best Small Fictions 2026 – together. It was an honour and a pleasure to hear nine wonderful writers from around the world who were featured in the anthology for a reading, alongside sharing one of my own pieces.
We heard:
- James Montgomery, reading ‘The Days The Cartoons Crept Out the TV’ (first published in Micro Madness)
- Rachel Smith, reading ‘What We Do on a Night Like This’ (Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine)
- Kate Horsley (me!), reading ‘Your 50ft Girlfriend Wants to Define the Relationship’, forthcoming, Moon City Review
- Rebecca Ball, reading ‘And We Know’ (Flash Frontier)
- Rekha Valliappan, reading ‘Bus Stop’ (A-Minor Magazine)
- Francesca Leader, reading ‘Cowboy’ (Southeast Review)
- Rosa Alcalá, reading ‘This Little Catalogue You’ve Been Assembling’ (The Hopkins Review)
- Miriam McEwen, reading ‘Aunt Lou’ (American Literary Review)
- Michael Czyzniejewski, reading ‘Her Heart Was a Chipmunk’ (Cleaver Magazine)
- Sara Hills, reading ‘A Cock Among the Bathers’, winner of the 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Award
You can watch the whole panel now on the Flash Frontier YouTube channel — huge thanks to Michelle Elvy and the whole NFFD NZ team for having me back!