The Scraps anthology was brought out to celebrate National Flash Fiction Day 2013, so is aptly named. Each oh-so-brief tale draws inspiration from art, film, TV, or other creative world, yet presents the pieces without note of these initial prompts, as, according to the editors, “they are no longer the point.”

What remains is an incredibly diverse and intriguing body of work, including pieces from renowned writers such as Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie and Sarah Hilary alongside fictions from emerging writers I hope to see more from in future.

For me, the best works of flash fiction contain the depths of a novel in a drop small enough to sit comfortably in the bowl of a teaspoon, and use skills shared by poets to evoke rather than say. It’s a writing discipline that demands the reader pay attention as much to the space between the lines as to the lines themselves. Each of the tales in this anthology achieve that, and some do it exceedingly well, including Feed A Fever by Freya Morris, which exhales a story of frailty and trust in such a way as to encapsulate large parts of the human experience. Continue reading →