28 pieces of writing spanning the first 5 years of Stanchion and including 5 new pieces from the likes of @toddedillard.bsky.social @jmgatford.bsky.social & @fbereaud.bsky.social. Cover art & photograph by me. Help celebrate reputable indie lit & keep this good thing going for 5 more years. 🖤🤍❤️

Best bookstore sign of the year…

Join SmokeLong for a mysterious month between November and December we’ve christened Promptember! We’ll be meeting several times a week online with live write-in and open mic events at various times to suit participants around this spinning globe, 100% free. www.smokelong.com/ready-for-pr...

Very last chance to book onto this weekend's Snapshot Story workshop! Learn how to transform an everyday moment into flash fiction (and fill in the missing pieces of all those those unfinished drafts and vignettes on your hard drive...): flashfictionmagazine.com/the-snapshot...

May I alert you to a rather joyful £500 writing competition you perhaps didn’t know you needed in your life, but in fact absolutely do…? www.failingwriterspodcast.com #flashfiction

Keep these away from Lou Wilson, no matter what he says @dimension20.bsky.social

All the flashy things! Including my Snapshot Story workshop on 11-12 Oct: flashfictionmagazine.com/the-snapshot...

Just a reminder to all you poets out there... Our 2025 Poetry Pamphlet Competition is open! mslexia.co.uk/competitions... By this time next year, we could be sharing about your launch reading! 🎉

Submissions to Issue 4 of @frazzledlit.bsky.social are now OPEN for the whole of October! www.frazzledlit.com/p/come-on-in...

So proud to have a story in this wonderful collection - such a worthy cause and a treasure trove of flash. Thanks for all your hard work @taniahershman.bsky.social!

I have a horrendous life-adminy meeting this afternoon and as a special treat my brain refused to let me sleep from 2-6am, but on the plus side my subconscious mapped out an entire one-act play, drafted a poem, and came up with a great Christmas present idea for my friend.

i think about this post every time i watch a movie

Disability: The Revolution! Special Issue Call for Submissions, Deadline November 30, 2025 If you identify as disabled and would like to answer this call, please submit! We would love to hear from you. See the full call and instructions on how to submit here: thefiddlehead.ca/revolution

This is how all jokes should be told.

To the mosquito who bit me on the SHIN last night: who fucking raised you? I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job but that is just a terrible choice for everyone involved.

Flash fiction folk! I'm running a FREE Ask, Write, Repeat drop-in session with Flash Fiction Magazine today (online @ 5pm BST / 9am PDT). Bring me your craft questions, your publishing puzzles, and join in with guided exercises and prompts: flashfictionmagazine.com/event/ask-wr...

I was explaining universal basic income to my kid yesterday and Oh! The Things We Would Do…

We need to change everything. Step 1 - join.greenparty.org.uk

A little teaser warm-up exercise for my Snapshot flash workshop (11-12th October) over at Flash Fiction Magazine… flashfictionmagazine.com/authors-only...

this is the only "the fight to make men read again" content that shouldn't be deleted

Ohhhh you know an email’s gonna contain a big old “but” and a rejection when it starts: “Thank you for your interest in [thing you submitted to]…”

Flashy workshoppy shenanigans happening in October... A whole weekend of generating story ideas and exploring techniques to turn everyday observations into compelling flash. (PLUS: finally fix those old drafts that still have *something* missing...) flashfictionmagazine.com/the-snapshot...

A story I've been trying to write for 20+ years found its home in Issue 3 of @frazzledlit.bsky.social: www.frazzledlit.com/p/young-enough

"Love and nature are indeed both pretty goshdarn large — often to the point where it feels impossible and overwhelming to try to describe them" Always a joy when a new @jmgatford.bsky.social newsletter lands in my inbox. Some great thoughts here on senses, specificity, and uniqueness of perspective

Just remembered that in the earliest hours of this morning I dreamt I had a pet wasp called Knuckle. You’re telling me THIS subconscious has to spend twelve hours a day writing emails and we’re calling that capitalism? Knuckle has never once written an email in his perfect little life.

Get the fuck out.

Six ‘Story in a Song’ writing exercises for your Monday morning, courtesy of John Denver sitting on a mountain. fixioning.substack.com/p/fill-up-yo...

There is a dangerous message being sold across the UK media that right wing extremism is inevitable and all we can do is offer up its desired victims - migrants, all people of colour, disabled people, trans people - in advance. But people's actions tell a different story.

Just spent two hours talking evangelistically about flash fiction to a local writing group and my brain/heart/flashy soul is very full.

If you're a writer that's currently thinking "What am I doing with my life? How did I get here?" just know that Peter Benchley partly wrote the novel JAWS in a converted chicken coop at his in-laws' house.

Here in #London at the counter demo it's taken 20 minutes to move 50 metres, there are so many of us

Oh! This is the best surprise! Absolutely adore @gonelawn.bsky.social and this piece is one of my favourite weird little ink-children.

Hey flashy folk! I'm excited to be running a 2-part workshop with Flash Fiction Magazine on 11-12th Oct on the 'snapshot' story! Learn how to transform ordinary observations and vignettes into compelling flash with depth, shape and nuance: flashfictionmagazine.com/the-snapshot...

It really is SO goodddddd

After raising £4k for fuel poverty charities from the print anthology, the FUEL flash ebook—with 12 bonus flash stories—is on its way! That’s 87 brilliant, surprising prizewinning flash stories by writers worldwide, exploding the myth that there's a formula for a “winning” story. www.fuelflash.net

I'm not quite sure how it's allowed to be September yet but the rest of my year is already filling up fast and I only have a handful of creative development/feedback one-to-ones still available so.... if you want one, get one! fixioning.substack.com/p/lets-talk-...

“This house will stand for aeons with its moral strength. This house will collapse any minute with secret, rotting shame…”

Always whip-smart and dangerously witty, that @sagreene1.bsky.social

A non-exhaustive (but occasionally exhausting) list of things that have fucked — and unfucked — my creativity the past month. Featuring: a faulty meatsuit, a vendetta against time, and the book-shaped hole in my heart... fixioning.substack.com/p/fixion-les...

September really said: “Summer? I hardly know her.”

So pleased to have a highly commended story in this issue!

Tomorrow is the big day! Issue 3 drops in the morning. We've got a tight packed issue waiting for you all, and we can't wait to release it. Fire up the last of the summer BBQs cause it's a smokin' hot one!

My dog has talking buttons and she’s started saying “all done” and “no” when I’m in a zoom meeting. (Also: “good girl” as a guilt trip because why would I dare disrespect such a perfect queen in this way?)

So excited to get my copy of ‘First Kicking…’ Loved ‘Ladies...’ (And I wrote ‘The Woman’s Part’ 💚) Books books books ahoy at @stanchion.bsky.social

NEW: “It is a famine. Everyone owns this.” UN emergency coordinator Tom Fletcher confirms a famine in Gaza. The whole world should be made to watch these two and half minutes. (🎥 BBC News)

Backwards in heels < in a chicken suit on ice skates

24 hours off work fun time thing #1: silent disco on a big hill with an ocean view.

I have been working like a doggg the past month and thought I was gonna have to work all through the weekend (again) but I just finished up a major project and now I have to fit every hobby I’ve ever dreamed of into the next 24 hours before it’s Monday again.

"Now you are an old man on a dismal patio in the same stucco neighborhood as before." This gut punch of a piece feels like a flash fiction sister to @megpillow.bsky.social's similarly powerful article: bsky.app/profile/megp...