Gems,
shards,
bon bons,
quickies. . .
. . .nuggets, tickles, or even pinpricks. Each 100 Word Story is its own kind of special.NOTHING SHORT OF presents the best of 100WordStory.org, the leader in short-short fiction and a popular go-to for great reading.In these very short stories, every word, every detail, every moment matters. And the things left out, the spaces around the stories, are just as intense.What can a hundred words do? They can send chills, they can bring you to tears, they can take your breath away. In charged, sometimes racy encounters — from wild, messy breakups to a disgruntled clown dinner to quiet revelations over folded laundry — these 100-word stories take us to lightning moments when everything is at stake.
“From butterknives to little dippers, the concerns of these stories range from the miniature to the galactic. A collection of taut tales, like a set of fingers gathered into a fist.” – Hilary Leichter
“These beautifully economical short stories (yes, truly stories) are photographs built with words. They capture a moment and a lifetime, a fraction and a whole. They are epics the size of sound bites, and they prove once and for all that size doesn’t matter. Just the stories that fit inside.” – Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World
“I love this little big book of 100s. But let’s call them Centuries, because they screw up time and space, these articulate deconstructions of Quantum Mechanics, these hopped up and happening nano-narratives lasting lifetimes, these microscopic millennia in nutshells.” – Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Winesburg, Indiana
“Each piece in this bite-sized anthology is an exercise in how much the authors can leave out while maintaining a complete story. Each story captivates readers in less than the amount of time it takes to brew a cup of coffee, making the anthology easily accessible in this age of the Twitter 280-character limit. . . The result is a nugget of pure story refined in red ink.” – Amity Hoffman at Heavy Feather Review
“Flash is a creative respite for me. It’s been there through some very stressful times, both personally and professionally. I can sit down at my desk without pressure. I can simply enjoy creating something I know won’t take months or years, yet get the same feeling of fulfillment after I’ve completed a flash piece that satisfies me. Sometimes within the hour…” – Tarah Lynn Masih at The Millions in a roundtable on flash fiction with Nancy Stohlman and Nothing Short Of editors Grant Faulkner and Lynn Mundell
“…dazzling and enticing, a kaleidoscopic intoxication. The anthology lifts you into a planetarium, drops you at a table in a Japanese restaurant, guides you into an octopus bar, lets you hide under a piano, leaves you shivering on Antarctica, and convicts you to a prison cell. The editors did a brilliant job in arranging the stories in such a way that you’re not thrown about too much from one extreme into another, but can enjoy a common atmosphere for a while, before the stories dive into a new direction… In this must-have collection of gems, which brings together some of the best flash writers in the world, you careen through a real and imagined world full of complexities and wonders. When you come to the end, you may need to brush off your clothes. Tight tales always pick up dust.” – Claire Polders at JMWW
“…As writers and editors of flash fiction, we love stories that are structured around a story’s gaps, the nuanced caesuras of what’s left out. In fact, the promise of a good flash story—a genre usually defined as being less than 1,000 words—is the way a narrative moves through an escalating series of hints. There’s no expectation of comprehensiveness, and often little room for connective tissue; rather, flash fiction invites the reader to live in the spaces of a story and imagine what’s left out.” – Grant, Lynn and Beret at The Millions, “Recommended Flash Fiction from the Editors of 100 Word Story”
“…from Grant Faulkner, Lynn Mundell and Beret Olsen, the editorial team behind the innovative flash fiction webzine 100WordStory.org. They’ve been publishing the best of micro-flash for nearly seven years. They’ve showed how bursts of illumination can be captured in 100 words, bringing shock and joy, wonder, and grief. They even have a photo prompt on the website, where readers can post. Their first anthology showcases the inventive ways writers tell stories within such a tiny compartment. It includes more than 100 gems—work by Maude Casey, Thaisa Frank, Molly Giles, Manuel Gonzales, Pamela Painter, Meg Pokrass, Ethel Rohan, Paul Strohm, Aaron Teel (and my flash story “Weed”). Reading them makes it clear, as the editors write, “To write with such brevity seems like it should be easy, but it’s not. Every word, every sentence matters.” – Jane Ciabattari, “20 Books You Should Read This April”
The Contributors
Roxanne Barber, Roberta Beary, Digby Beaumont, Karen Benke, Ariel Berry, Emma Bogdonoff, Maggie Bohara, Jean-Luc Bouchard, Heather Bourbeau, James Braziel, Gerri Brightwell, Dan Campbell, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Kate Hill Cantrill, Maud Casey, Brian Castleberry, Kevin Catalano, Ashley Chantler, Lina Chern, Jane Ciabattari, Stephen Cicirelli, Shara Concepción, Doug Cornett, Cherie Hunter Day, Jacques Debrot, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Joe Dornich, Jacqueline Doyle, Andrew O. Dugas, Misty Ellingburg, Sherrie Flick, Rachel Fogarty-Oleson, Kendra Fortmeyer, Thaisa Frank, Sarah Freligh, Jeff Friedman, Molly Fuller, Molly Giles, Barbara Goldberg, Manuel Gonzales, Ilan Greenberg, Robert Gregory, Stephen D. Gutierrez, Jennifer Handley, Chad Hanson, Tupelo Hassman, Eldon Hauck, Jeremy Hawkins, Emily Haymans, Elizabeth Hazen, Tom Hazuka, Kyle Hemmings, Melanie Taylor Herrera, Dane Holweger, Gail Hosking, Ulrica Hume, M.J. Iuppa, Royce Jeffrey, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Simon Jimenez, Alyssa Jordan, Lee Romer Kaplan, Lee L. Krecklow, Leonard Kress, Amy Lafferty, Steven Levery, Colin Lubner, Jason Marak, Jackie Davis Martin, Jayne Martin, Ruth Martini, Tara Lynn Masih, James McCready, Josh McCuen, Jane McDermott, Corey Mesler, Michael Mira, Kona Morris, Kermit Moyer, Cornelia Nixon, Levi Andrew Noe, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Fred Osuna, Pamela Painter, Jason Peck, Oren Peleg, Jonathan Penner, Adrienne Pilon, Maria Pinto, Meg Pokrass, Eric Prochaska, Peg Alford Pursell, JC Reilly, Ethel Rohan, Lisa Rubenson, Cathy Safiran, Robert Scotellaro, Robert Shapard, Kevin Sharp, Marc J. Sheehan, Tonya Shenandoah, Jon Sindell, Myra Sklarew, Janice D. Soderling, Joshua Kathy Steblen, Charlie Stephens, Michael Stewart, Nancy Stohlman, Paul Strohm, Elizabeth Swann, Aaron Teel, Becky Tuch, Meg Tuite, Connor Walsh, Barret Warner, Courtney Watson, and Guinotte Wise.
The Editors
Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. His essays on creative writing have appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, and Writer’s Digest, and his stories have appeared in dozens of literary journals, including The Southwest Review, The Los Angeles Review, Five Points, and Tin House online. He recently published a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and a book of essays on creativity, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo.
Lynn Mundell is the co-founder of 100 Word Story. She has worked as a professional writer and editor for 30 years. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and short stories have appeared in literary journals including The Sun, Superstition Review, Eclectica, Tin House online, Portland Review, and Five Points, and have been published in the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. She is most recently a contributor to the W.W. Norton anthology New Microfiction: Exceptionally Short Stories.
Beret Olsen is a writer, photographer, and the photo editor for 100 Word Story. Her art, essays, and fiction have been published in a variety of places including: First Class Lit, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and her blog, Bad Parenting 101. A longtime educator, Beret also writes grants to help low-income, first-generation college students get into, through, and beyond college.