Native Hawaiian writer living in Japan
https://www.melissallanesbrownlee.com/
Bitter over Sweet https://tinyurl.com/5hd7u63r
Hard Skin http://tinyurl.com/yc53
Kahi&Lua http://tinyurl.com/3ryfzvwh
'chitchitchiterring in the corner...' 🦟
Such a biting one from @lumchanmfa.bsky.social in @natflashfictionday.bsky.social
No one does “voice” quite like @lumchanmfa.bsky.social. And have you heard her play the ukulele?
FlashFlood: 'before the first bite' by Melissa Llanes Brownlee #nffd2026
weekly ukulele video 🥰❤️
Every Breath You Take by The Police
youtu.be/I7RcUkaqoX4
Happy National Flash Fiction Day, everyone! 🥳 Here's my offering in the #FlashFlood - 'Down From the Door' #NFFD2026
It me!
Don't miss out on reading @lumchanmfa.bsky.social's latest #flashfiction piece that was recently published in the Flash Flood Journal! buff.ly/YP7XvVA
Afterwards, dive into Melissa's collection BITTER OVER SWEET, right here! buff.ly/fwWykfz
Melissa Llanes Brownlee
Just updated my wall of #WriteBeyondTheLightbulb stories (www.mattkendrick.co.uk/wbtl-stories) & marvelling at the 17 #WBTL pieces published by @natflashfictionday.bsky.social in the last few years from @yallaalia.bsky.social @karenc.bsky.social @tomljanovic.bsky.social @sudhab.bsky.social...
chitchitchiterring in the corner, in the dark, piercing me with the ting tang of rotten rambutan, rancid lychee, scritchscritchscritching along the wall, along my bed, black earth and moist vegetal matter, oozing with worms and fungus, eaters of life and death, and I stuff my head under the light covers of the bed, the mosquito netting, once flowy in the evening cross breeze from the open window, now taut as the phwickphwickphwicking phwicks itself up it, the netting parting, gossamer strands, melting beneath clickclickclicking clackclackclacking and the sweet smell of a corpse, a squashed durian, garlic and garbage, drowns me
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Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Moon City Review, Redivider, and The Adroit Journal, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and check out her new collection, Bitter over Sweet (2025), from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
FlashFlood: 'before the first bite' by Melissa Llanes Brownlee #nffd2026
chitchitchiterring in the corner, in the dark, piercing me with the ting tang of rotten rambutan, rancid lychee, scritchscritchscritching along the wall, along my bed, black earth and moist vegetal matter, oozing with worms and fungus, eaters of life and death, and I stuff my head under the light covers of the bed, the mosquito netting, once flowy in the evening cross breeze from the open window, now taut as the phwickphwickphwicking phwicks itself up it, the netting parting, gossamer strands, melting beneath clickclickclicking clackclackclacking and the sweet smell of a corpse, a squashed durian, garlic and garbage, drowns me
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Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Moon City Review, Redivider, and The Adroit Journal, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and check out her new collection, Bitter over Sweet (2025), from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
And one morning she has simply had enough of her life, its smallness and its hardness, and she lays down the skin she has worn like a mask for a decade and brings out from the attic the parts of herself she has almost forgotten, untouched for so long - heart marking time, eyes piercing shadows, mouth that conjures laughter like a spell - and she closes the door for the last time and looks out at the land rising up to the sky as though for the first time and the mountain shimmers and she smells rain on leaves, hears rain on leaves, tastes rain on tongue, and she shoulders her pack and doesn’t look backwards even for a moment and a bird calls like a memory and her scarf is cool against her skin and her rage at all the wasted years is hot in her cheeks and she lets it be, lets it breathe, doesn’t smother it, and she has only a little money in her pocket but she knows these woods, knew them as a child, knows them now after all and she sets her foot on the path and the mountain waits.
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Sarah McPherson loves folk tales and myths and finding the weird in the everyday. Her flash fiction has been widely published, nominated for Best Small Fictions, longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50, and selected for Best Microfiction 2021. Find her on Bluesky as @summermoth.bsky.social or at https://theleadedwindow.blogspot.com/.
In the flood @natflashfictionday.bsky.social
flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2026/06/befo...
Melissa Llanes Brownlee
FlashFlood: 'Chickenshits' by Jay Parr #nffd2026
Matt Kendrick
National Flash Fiction Day
She drops her sundress at her feet in the still night air, calls us boys a bunch of chickenshits, dives ghost-naked off the quarry's lip, and pounds a moonlight bullet hole in the black-glass water below.
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Jay Parr (he/they) lives in the NC Piedmont, and teaches fun stuff like banned books, othered voices—and a whole-ass class about Frankenstein—in the nontraditional online humanities program at UNCG.
I'm in the flood! It's an honor to make it into the flood this year with maybe my weirdest story yet. #nffd2026
FlashFlood: 'At the Drive Thru' by Chelsea Stickle #nffd2026
National Flash Fiction Day
A chicken takes my order. Clucks as she hunts and pecks the right keys. Bock-bock-bock. She mentions there’s a deal on chicken nuggets, but I pass. At the window, I can’t stop staring at her gorgeous white feathers, each tipped with a line of black. She looks fluffy and fine as she pecks the paper money from my hands then the coins. Her firm, horn-like beak grazing the soft meat of my palm. I thank her. Another chicken with a huge pompadour uses her beak to close a twenty-piece box of nuggets. At the stovetop there’s a Highland cow with long brown hair bunched into a hairnet, flipping cheeseburgers and blowing the bangs out of her eyes. She moos that her patties are one minute out. There’s a russet potato with a dozen eyes wearing a paper hat on fryer duty, crisping up his unluckier comrades. The window chicken passes me my meal without passing judgement. On the road, I scarf my cheeseburger. When I get down to the rind, I bite into the webbing of my hand between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t notice until two bites in. All I taste are calories.
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Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Learn more at chelseastickle.com.
