The shortest day of the year also proved to be the biggest event for fiction writers in Northland so far this year, with a crowd of 40 gathering in central Whangarei on June 22 to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day with a night of short short story readings, coinciding with readings nationwide and the announcement of the supreme national winner.
Flash Fiction is the art of telling an entire story in 300 words. The art form is called Flash Fiction because the story is ‘over in a flash’ or – as lore has it – the story can be read in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
Northland has performed highly at National Flash Fiction Day most years since its inception in 2012, with Bay of Islands writer Vera Dong winning first place in 2022 as well as placing fourth equal in 2021 – impressive considering there are many hundreds of entries each year.
Featured readers at the Thursday June 22 Whangarei event included June Pitman-Hayes of Tamaterau, Northland’s highest placed writer for her story ‘The kina girl’ which made the national top 10 shortlist.
Pitman-Hayes received the NZ Society of Authors National Flash Fiction Northland Regional Prize – which she says is her first ever literary award. Pitman-Hayes also got her 100-word micro-story ‘Paper Doll’ in the shortlist for the Micro Madness international competition, winners of which were announced during the same evening.
Three other Tai Tokerau entries cracked the top 25 longlist – Sue Barker of Waipū for her stories ‘Rural bliss’ and ‘Gymkhana meets Madonna.’ The other was ‘All hung out: Washing Lines of my Life’ by Whangarei Heads writerDeb Jowitt.
Other readers were award-winning poet Piet Nieuwland who read from ‘A Cluster of Lights,’ a new flash collection organised by former Northlander Michelle Elvy, Eddie Williams, and Emma Philips, head girl of Ruawai College, who was presented with the inaugural NZSA Northland youth award. Emma won the Whangarei Libraries flash fiction contest in 2022 and has ranked highly in National Flash Fiction Day in both 2022 and 2023.
National Flash Fiction Day 2023 winners will be published online over the coming week.
Write Up North 