This month’s Mondettes are from the stupendous Sharon Telfer.
Sharon Telfer’s flash fiction has won prizes including the Bath Flash Fiction Award (twice) and the Reflex Fiction Prize. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. Her flash fiction collection, The Map Waits, is published by Reflex Press and was longlisted for the 2022 Edgehill Short Story Prize. She lives in the Yorkshire Wolds, in the north of England.
If you aren’t familiar with her work, here’s one of her pieces to start things off:
Picnic at the End of the World (Sharon Telfer | The Cabinet of Heed)
Why I like it: the way the title hangs over the piece like a shadow, how the opening paragraphs set up the scene before we launch into that long list of food items, how that list unfolds in such a lyrical fashion and how the list is used to pick out the backstory of this couple, a patchwork of details that knit together to form a full sense of their life.
The Partitioning of Dreams (Susmita Bhattarcharya | FlashBack Fiction)
Why I like it: This heartbreaker encompasses refugee flight, childhood trauma, lost histories, familial love, dementia, historic upheaval. But we feel all this through tiny touches. Sensual memories (tart mango, swollen feet, black dirt) keep us close to this woman’s experience. Changing tenses and relationships quietly signal the layers of one life. Only we – as readers – witness her true history. Under 500 words, this shows how flash can open up the biggest subjects.
Juliet Changes Her Mind (Amelia Gray | Electric Literature)
Why I like it: Rewriting Shakespeare’s a high-wire act, but sure-footed confidence compels us across here. There are call-backs to the play (the sun, the east, the pacing of the last phrase) and nods to the contemporary (‘gross’, ‘whatever’) that never intrude. Tragic switches to comic. This is Juliet’s point of view, a convincing portrayal of a girl awakening into her true self. I love how this piece, like Juliet, claims its own space.
PROMPT: What if Jane Eyre had helped Bertha Mason escape? If Ilsa had stayed with Rick? If Odysseus had gone straight home? Rewrite the ending of a classic story.
Our Lady Enters the City in Three Attempts (Sarah Arantza Amador | X-R-A-Y Lit Mag)
Why I like it: A feast of language and sensual description paints a strong sense of a time and a place and a moment (‘the noseless lieutenant’, ‘the king’s parrots and anemic flamingos’), but still feels elusive. It’s full of tension and contrasts: male/female, glory/misery, physical/mystical. Who or what has been captured here? I love how this story feels immediate and complete, but remains so mysterious.
Miðnætursól, Kristin Bonilla | NFFD Flash Flood Journal)
Why I like it: I love stories which inhabit that edge land where the everyday meets the eerie and where place feels like character. This has both. Details sketch out the setting (the lava field, that midnight sun). Ambiguous framing (the repeated ‘Let us say’) unsettles. The second-person ‘You’ makes us complicit in – whatever it is. We might think we know what’s going on, but all we have is ‘suspicion’ and our own imaginings.
PROMPT: Write your character entering a bustling place you know well: a hospital or station, say. They find it empty. As they move through, what do or don’t they see? Take your story from there. Keep it open-ended.
Satin Nightwear for Women Irregular (Elisabeth Ingram Wallace | Bath Flash Fiction Award)
Why I like it: The wordplay fizzes (‘taut muscled screams’). This shattered language mirrors the disorientation of grief (‘the ground is worming’). Yet the observation stays pinpoint-sharp (‘pages clotted with butter, her fingerprints still’). The turn two-thirds through (‘… I walk home a different way’) marks an emotional shift like the calm after weeping. One simple sentence stops my heart every time.
Vagabond Mannequin (Avitus B Carle, writing as KB Carle | Jellyfish Review)
Why I like it: In this innovative piece, the girl’s situation is hidden from herself and others. With no fixed starting-point, she – and we – must puzzle out her story haphazardly through solving clues. ‘Hermit crab’ flash (where a story follows an existing form) can sometimes feel formulaic. But here the structure works as an active and profound element of the story, essential to its meaning.
I Want to Believe the Truth is Out There (Lori Sambol Brody | Jellyfish Review)
Why I like it: Again, an unusual parallel structure makes us investigators into the real story. One side represents the comforting myths we tell ourselves, the other the truth we try to hide. We hold both what we hope for and what we know, though they may not be the same, just as the two slogans in the title elide. I love this consistent and clever use of popular culture.
Down the Long, Long Line (Mary-Jane Holmes | FlashBack Fiction)
Why I like it: A propulsive rush of a paragraph, theme fits form perfectly as a woman journeys from ‘Dark to light’. Precise descriptions of landscape and action (‘Ma netted sparrow’) and specific language/dialect (‘ginnel’, ‘spuggy’) root us in time and place. But the rhythmic energy keeps us moving (those repeated ‘there’s’). Progress feels inevitable and exhilarating. I love flash that goes beyond the moment, to cover years or whole lives.
A One-Word Yet Possibly Longer-Than-Necessary Personal Essay … (Ingrid Jendrzejewski | National Flash Fiction Day micro competition 2016)
Why I like it: So light-handed and witty, this micro makes me smile every time I read it. There are writing in-jokes; we’re always told how important titles are, and it plays with competition word limits. But it’s more than a trick. Reversing the balance between story and title makes us reflect on the balance of speech/opinion between these two characters. There’s a very recognisable relationship here.
PROMPT: Write a short piece where at least half the story lives in the title. Weigh the balance between the title and story elements.
A New Career in a New Town (Simon Armitage | Flit)
Why I like it: Here, dry humour crackles around an important memory sitting inside a dream-like shell (how did Bowie get his number?) This must be a prose poem, right? It is written by the UK Poet Laureate. But even he’s not sure (as his blog explains). Maybe it’s CNF (creative non-fiction)? Most flash lit mags would take it, I reckon. Ultimately, I love that those boundaries don’t matter: the story finds the shape it needs to be.
What did you think of these choices? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments - have you found a new favourite piece? Did you try out one of the prompts?
Next month’s selection will be chosen by Nikki Rivera and will be appearing (fingers crossed) on the 23rd April.
Opportunities to work with Matt
Write Beyond the Lightbulb
Lyrical Writing (3rd-16th June 2024): BOOK NOW! (FIVE PLACES LEFT!)
Colourful Characters (5th-18th August 2024): FIND OUT MORE (GET YOUR NAME ON THE PRIORITY LIST!)
Go With The Flow (9th-22nd September 2024): FIND OUT MORE (GET YOUR NAME ON THE PRIORITY LIST!)
Glorious Words (7th-20th October 2024): FIND OUT MORE (GET YOUR NAME ON THE PRIORITY LIST!)
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
Fantastic picks here from Sharon, Matt. Some of my all-time favorites in this list. I love the prompts as well!
Thank you, Matt. What a wonderful story by Sharon!