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GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
A trawl for terse tales
Want to see your name in print? Now's your chance... ANDY HEDGECOCK explains how you can do it in this guide to writing 'flash fiction' and how you can submit your work to the Morning Star
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
WHAT is flash fiction? Poet and fiction writer Nuala Ni Chonchuir describes it as “intense, urgent and often a little explosive, but also deep and clear.” All in fewer than 1,000 words.
One well-known flash is a six-word tragedy, sometimes attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
The most common formats are the drabble or micro fiction (100 words), the dribble or mini-saga (50 words), sudden fiction (750 words) and twitterature (280 characters). But a quick browse of online flash competitions reveals a more varied range of word lengths.
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