Special Guests

Laura Besley

Laura Besley is the author of (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She has been widely published in online journals, print journals and anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2021). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and is currently a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester.

Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.

She tweets @laurabesley

Tommy Dean

Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks, Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022).

He lives in Indiana, where he is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine.

A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022. His work has been published in Monkeybicycle, Laurel Review, Moon City Review, Pithead Chapel, New Flash Fiction Review, and many other litmags.

He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections conference, and The Writers Workshop. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter and/or BlueSky 

Mandira Paittnaik
Mandira Pattnaik is a fiction writer, poet, columnist and editor published in print and online in over 200 journals/magazines, including Best Small Fictions Anthology 2021, Citron Review, Passages North, DASH, Miracle Monocle, Timber Journal, Penn Review, Contrary, Quarterly West, Watershed Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and Prime Number Magazine, among other publications. Wigleaf Top 50 Longlisted (2022), four-times Pushcart Prize-nominated, five times for Best Microfictions, and thrice for Best of the Net, her fiction has been translated and highly commended including Honorable Mention in CRAFT Flash Contest 2020, Highly Commended at Litro Magazine Summer Contest 2021, shortlisting at Retreat West Micro Fiction Contest and Strands International Fiction Contest, longlisting at Smokelong Comedy Prize The Commies, Brilliant Flash Fiction Contest and AWC Furious Fiction. Mandira’s columns about writing life and craft appear regularly on Trampset and Reckon Review, and on her author blog mandirapattnaik.com She has led successful creative writing workshops independently, and for Retreat West and Crow Collective.

Martha Lane
Martha Lane is a writer by the sea. Her stories about grief, nature, class and all things unrequited, have been widely published and can be found online at marthalane.co.uk. 

Her speculative novella Lies Over the Ocean, published by Alien Buddha press can be found here.

Anita Goveas
Anita Goveas is British-Asian, London-based, and fuelled by strong coffee and paneer jalfrezi.  She’s on the editorial team at Flashback Fiction, and runs flash fiction workshops with Farhana Khalique. Her debut flash collection, ‘Families and other natural disasters’, is available from Reflex Press, and links to her stories are at https://coffeeandpaneer.wordpress.com  

Karen Jones
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. In 2021, she won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and was shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction and Bath Short Story Award. Her novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review and an editor for National Flash Fiction Day anthology. 

Twitter - @karjon

Nora Nadjarian

Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. Her poetry has been published in Atrium, Raceme, Streetcake and Poetry International. She has been placed or commended in numerous international competitions, including the Plough Poetry Prize and the Live Canon International Poetry Competition.

Her short fiction has appeared, among others, in San Journal, FRiGG, MoonPark Review and Lunate and was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2022 (selected by Kathy Fish).

She has led workshops for the Flash Fiction Festival,, the Nottingham Trent University's Postcolonial Studies Centre and Crow Collective.

You can find Nora here - https://noranadjarian.com/

Emily Devane

Emily Devane is a writer, editor, and teacher from Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Ambit, Smokelong Quarterly, The Lonely Crowd and Best Microfictions. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Northern Writers’ Award and a Word Factory apprenticeship. Emily was recently shortlisted for The Mogford Food and Drink Writing Prize, and she won second prize in the Bath Short Story Award. 

Emily teaches creative writing at Moor Words, co-hosts Word Factory’s Strike! Short Story Club and is a founding editor of FlashBack Fiction. 

You can find Emily on Twitter @DevaneEmily

Electra Rhodes

Electra Rhodes is an award winning writer and teacher. One of the 2022/23 Emerging Writers with the London Library, she has published more than 200 pieces of short writing, has work in 60 anthologies, has placed in 80 competitions and has won 15. Her craft book on writing is coming in 2023 as part of the Master Craft series from Ad Hoc Fiction.

She tweets extravagantly on writing, archaeology and her elderly dad @electra_rhodes 

Jenney Rowe
Jenny Rowe is a flash fiction author, playwright and improviser. Her stories have placed in NYC Midnight, TSS Flash Competition, Henshaw Press Flash Competition and Weird Christmas. She wrote and performed Tiptree: No-one Else’s Damn Secret But My Own, a one-woman show about the author James Tiptree. Jenny is a a member of the improv group The Maydays.  

Twitter - @tiptreejen
www.jennyrowe.co.uk

S. A. Greene

S. A. Greene ran Strangely Familiar in September 2022. Greene's stories have included talking foetuses, musical vaginas and Humpty Dumpty’s mother. Janus Lit., Sledgehammer, Ellipsis Zine, Flash Flood, Funny Pearls, Reflex Fiction, Retreat West and others have published her work. She’s on the latest Wigleaf 50 Longlist with a story involving a sponge, and had a Pushcart nomination last year for a story about a man with a cardboard box on his head.

Twitter - @SAGreene1