Short prose from Flash Fiction contest winners

Could you write a short story in only 250 words? That’s the challenge that Canadian Authors — Victoria put out to writers on Vancouver Island.

It’s called “flash fiction,” and it tests a writer’s ability to tell a story in a format where every word counts. The rules were simple: • Open to residents of Vancouver Island & nearby Canadian islands.

• Stories may be in any fiction genre; they must be 250 words or less and in English.

• Stories must be original and unpublished and not be under consideration elsewhere.

Today, we have the winners of the contest, chosen by John Gould, author of Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good and the Giller-nominated collection Kilter: 55 Fictions.

Judge John Gould’s comments:

250 words — it’s barely enough to get your fingers loosened up on the keyboard. Yet the writers who rose to the challenge of this contest built fascinating, fraught little worlds within that tight space. Reading through the submissions has been a pleasure.

The work of the three authors I’ve selected gives some sense of the kind of compression many of the participants achieved.

In microfiction, we want every word to count. A dramatic indication of this attention to detail is that for all three winning stories, the title doesn’t just serve as a label, but rather adds a whole other dimension to our understanding.

In the case of Step Mom, for instance, the title is actually a key to the piece, attuning us to the painful mix of intimacy and alienation this woman experiences. Problem Solving is a sharply ironic understatement of the situation of the story’s protagonist.

As for Threesome, it hits just the right comic tone for the tale’s cheeky spirit.

All three stories ring us like a bell, and leave us resonating.