December 2024
Twenty (and a few more) of my favourite flash fiction pieces from 2024
Since it’s the last month of the year, I’m taking the reins of Mondettes and choosing some of my favourite flash fiction pieces from the last twelve months. I think I’ve previously called these the MAFFIAs (the Matt Flash Fiction Awards). Choosing just ten was impossible, so I’ve allowed myself twenty picks, all of which feel like essential reading. I should stress that these are just SOME of my favourites and that, as with any “best of” list, it very much depends on which stories the picker has read (I haven’t read half as much as I would have liked this year), how good their memory / record keeping is (not particularly great) and what their mood is when they come to making their picks.
Since choosing my “top” twenty, I’ve since thought of a few more stories which I’ve added as “bonus” picks below. No doubt, I’ll keep adding to this, for my own benefit as much as anyone else’s.
Poison Ivy (Sarah Freligh | Fictive Dream)
Why I like it: the vastness of story contained in such a small space, incorporating past and present and future in such a seamless, breathless way; this was a piece that spoke to me on so many levels.
PROMPT: find a story from your archive of “abandoned pieces” that only focuses on one time period then create a backstory echo that you might weave around that scene.
An Implicit Comparison Between Two Unlike Things (Stephanie Yu | Swamp Pink)
Why I like it: I love how wonderfully meta this is, how it is as much a contemplation on the art of crafting a story as it is a contemplation on life and death; this is a piece with so many layers, the sort of piece to read over and over because there is so much hidden in these depths.
A Case for Forbidden Words (Ifreen Raveen | SmokeLong Quarterly)
Why I like it: the rhythm of the writing is so brilliantly insistent – there are anaphora lists (“Calling for help. Calling for death. Calling for mothers.”), there are mirrored pairs (“Men crying, women wailing”), there are repeating motifs (“And that word is Azadi”). I love the use of the imperative, commanding a reader to experience the story for themselves.
The end (Shaun Levin | New Flash Fiction Review)
Why I like it: I’ve mainly picked these pieces by what has stayed with me. This one has such a unique feel to it, and I love how it travels through different tones (the humour at the start, the sadness that creeps in later on), how so much of the story is dedicated to not telling the story.
PROMPT: write a piece where a character uses humour to avoid something they would rather not think about.
The Dead Guy’s Phone Keeps Calling Me (Francince Witte | Gooseberry Pie)
Why I like it: the way it shifts from sentence to sentence, each new element ramping up the underlying tension, the title hanging over everything like a shadow.
This is the spot where – (Nora Nadjarian | Fractured Lit)
Why I like it: the personification of the “moonlight-sequinned sea”, the interplay between dialogue and description, the way the M-dash of the title creates a sense for a reader of holding their breath, waiting for that final paragraph to understand what happened here.
PROMPT: write a story where a feature of the landscape is personified in some way, thinking about what the voice might sound like and what they might have to say to a specific character (perhaps an apology, perhaps a confession, perhaps a secret, perhaps a criticism, perhaps a demand)
Whale Fall (Shauna Friesen | Gone Lawn)
Why I like it: I’m a sucker for original language and wow does this piece have that in spades. I could quote most of the piece as highlight sentences, but here are some favourites – “The bubbling blubber slits”, “Chunk me like a jaw-shaped moon”, “a gore-slab pushed trenchward”, “octopuses yarn their arms through the loom of my ribcage”.
Girl Locks (Claudia Monpere | Split Lip Magazine)
Why I like it: this is such a chilling story full of powerful imagery. That imagery (“He is the language of crosshatch and locks” / “in buttery kitchen sunlight”) is so uniquely creative – I love how the choices fit both character and scenario in such an effective way.
This Isn’t the Start of the Story (Sumitra Singam | Heroin Chic)
Why I like it: ooft! Such a powerful piece. The anaphora repetition of “it doesn’t start” works so well to build emotional resonance, other repeating elements building at the same time (“Ma’s Ma” / “Ma’s Ma’s Ma”); the whole thing brought to the page with such lyrical skill.
Chaos (Patricia Q. Bidar | Fractured Lit)
Why I like it: writing from a collective point of view is such a great choice to tell this particular story; what I find so clever here is how we are constantly asked to re-evaluate everything with the narrative, how the stakes and emotions shift around underneath.
PROMPT: write a story using a collective point of view which focuses on an event or crime in a small community and use the collective POV to examine the way the truth of the situation might shift over the course of time.
Moonlit Field (Andrew Bertaina | Literary Namjooning)
Why I like it: this piece was chosen by someone else earlier in the year, but I couldn’t not include it in my top 20 for 2024; it is so beautifully lyrical. Writing these breathless, one-sentence stories requires so much skill to make them read as seamlessly as this one.
The Interview (Emily Rinkema | Variant Lit)
Why I like it: picking just one piece from Emily Rinkema was tough because she has had several gems published this year. I’ve ended up choosing this one because of the unique scenario set up so brilliantly at the start and explored in different ways as the piece moves through its different gears.
PROMPT: what unexpected position might you be interviewed for? Imaginary friend? Chief mourner at a funeral? Godparent? Dance partner at a disco, nightclub or ball? Fellow passenger of a train compartment?
Open Them If You Don’t Believe Me (K.C. Mead-Brewer | Matchbook Lit)
Why I like it: the author’s note that accompanies this story talks about the story’s shape as a tree, and I love that comparison. Normally, in pieces like this, balance is achieved by creating segments of roughly equal length, but here the drastic difference between segment lengths really stands out.
Teaching a Young David Petraeus about War (Adam Straus | HAD)
Why I like it: there is such a powerful sense of message here, so many layers beneath the story. This is a triptych of paragraphs that relate at the level of theme rather than the level of story and I love the way they chime together.
Splinter (Didi Wood | Fractured Lit)
Why I like it: this is another single-sentence story, but one with a very different emotional tone. I love how the choice of writing this as a single sentence is so effective at building the emotions of the piece. I also love how that single word title connects with the story in so many different ways.
National Anthem (Chloe Chun Seim | Milk Candy Review)
Why I like it: this story is both vast and intimate – it covers childhood, adulthood, what is real, what is imagined; it evokes a specific place but also looks outwards to the “nation”. It is also so wonderfully balanced – there are two competing elements here (the shooter / the discovery of identity) braided together in such a clever way.
The Princess of Tides (Amy Barnes | Literary Namjooning)
Why I like it: certain writers craft pieces that only they could write, and Amy Barnes is one of those writers. This piece has everything that makes her writing unique – it is beautifully lyrical, it is full of odd details, it delves into character, it resonates at the level of emotions.
Revision (Beth Kanter | New Flash Fiction Review)
Why I like it: this piece hit me from its opening sentence. Straightaway we are into the “revision” referred to in the title, imagining Anne Frank’s life if the world had been different, the implied tension between the reality and the imagined scene, all of it ending with a note of cautious hope that is so universal.
PROMPT: take a real life figure who died young and imagine them when they are old; what story might emerge from this?
The Things You Think Are Precious (Kathy Fish | Ghost Parachute)
Why I like it: the way this piece continuously pushes away from the revelation it is driving towards is so effective. Kathy Fish is a writer who never fails to bring a whole universe to life in the space of a few short words, and here we have that and so much more. I love the tonal shifts in this (“I was an only child, something they all considered mildly exotic” is a particular highlight) and the way the characters walk off the page in such vivid fashion.
After too many wines at the student club, your friend shows you a photograph of her infant daughter (Gillian O'Shaughnessy | The Welkin Writing Prize)
Why I like it: This was the piece I picked as the winner of this year’s Welkin Mini. As I say in my judge’s comments, I was mesmerised by the layers of the story, how we shift through so much narrative in just one hundred words. The title does so much heavy-lifting. There is so much implication in the small details - the curling edges of the photo, the colour contrast in that garden. I love how the end of the piece asks us to reflect back and ponder.
BONUS STORIES
Baby (Ani Banerjee | Swamp Pink)
Crossroads Diner Blues, 1937 (Myna Chang | Centaur Lit)
Double-Barrelled (Subhravandu Das | Vestal Review)
Nice Little Girls (Jo Gatford | Cease, Cows)
Australia (J.W. McCollum | Flash Frog)
Triple-Digit Fire Weather (Dawn Tasaka Steffler | Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine)
The Papermoon (Joel Hans | HAD)
Changeling (L Mari Harris | Flash Frog)
Parallel Universes (Katherine Huang | Whale Road Review)
The Reluctant Reader’s Guide to Charles Dickens (Emily Devane | Flash Flood)
Vulcanized (Thomas Mixon | Variant Lit)
What about you? What are your favourite pieces from this year? Please feel free to share your own personal picks in the comments - I always love to hear other people’s suggestions.
Next month’s selection will be chosen by Finnian Burnett and will be appearing (fingers crossed) on the 21st January.
Opportunities to work with Matt
Editing
NOVEL / NOVELLA EDITING: First steps review, structural review, line edit, proof edit, submission review
EDITING FOR COLLECTIONS: structural overview report, line edit, proof edit
SHORT FICTION EDITING: Structural review, line edit, detailed edit, proof edit
What a list! Thank you so much for including "Splinter."
This is so lovely of you, Matt. I'm very honored to be included in this stellar list because you know flash fiction! And writing in general. I'm eager to go through this list and catch the ones I'd missed previously. Thanks!