New Writers Flash Fiction Competition 2026 – Results

After detailed and careful consideration, our judges have chosen the winners of the New Writers Flash Fiction Competition 2026.

Congratulations to the authors whose entries were selected to win a prize and those who made the shortlist or longlist. We received a total of 652 entries to the competition.

Thank you to everyone who entered. The competition helped raise money for two fantastic UK-registered charities: First Story and The Funzi & Bodo Trust. We have transferred the donations (10% of entry fee proceeds) and we are confident the charities will put the money to excellent use.

And so, to the winners, and the shortlisted and longlisted entries. The winners will also be published in the next New Writers Anthology (the inaugural issue can be found HERE).

Flash Fiction Winners 2026

Click on the titles below to read the winning entries.

First Prize (£1,100): The Lowing of Cattle by Chris Cottom

Author bio: Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fainéant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. Find him at @chriscottom.bsky.social and chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom

Judge’s Comments: Chris Cottom was the runner-up in last year’s Flash Fiction Competition, but he has gone one better this time around with this haunting, powerful story filled with affecting images and metaphors. The ‘brittle and filthy’ teat of the feeding bottle, the ‘mountain of broken breezeblocks’ and ‘rubble and crud, bindweed and ivy’ illustrate the state of the byre, and the protagonist’s relationship with Barry. Sound is masterfully woven into the texture of the piece, with the ‘rat-a-tat splat’ of the rain like a ‘demented snare drum’, Barry’s babbling, buzzing and wittering, and, of course, the ‘ghost calves calling for their mothers’, immersing the reader in ‘this place of cruelty’. A brilliantly executed piece of flash fiction.

Second Prize (£300): A Woman Makes a Cardboard Train by Jay McKenzie

Author bio: Jay McKenzie’s work appears in Maudlin House, Fictive Dream, Fractured Lit, The Waxed Lemon and others. Last year, she won the Fish Short Story Prize, The Midway Journal Flash Prize, Write by the Sea’s Short Story Prize, the Danahy Prize for Fiction, and Terrain’s Fiction Prize. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her novel, How to Lose the Lottery was published by HarperFiction in March 2026. You can find her at www.jaymckenzieauthor.com or on Instagram as @jay_writes_books

*** Note that Jay McKenzie’s novel currently has 40% off at Harper Collins. Get your copy HERE. ***

Judge’s Comments: Jay McKenzie’s beautifully written flash fiction takes the reader on an exciting and inspiring journey into the imagination of a woman on a mission. The judges loved the protagonist’s imaginative rebellion against society’s expectations, viewing the boxes not as vessels for mundane household items, but as the building blocks of something fantastical and great: a steam train. The Dutch oven that would ‘slowly suffocate meat’ gives an insight, perhaps, into the woman’s feeling of being suffocated by the roles she’s played throughout her life, before her act of creation, maybe self-realisation, is filled with hopefulness and the wonder and daring of a child’s mind as she laughs in the naysayers’ faces and steams ahead without a backward glance. The specificity of the woman’s creation (‘a jasmine-scented sleeper car’) and the vibrancy of the colours (‘thrumming violet’ and ‘cerise oozing suggestion’) bring the train – and the woman’s psyche – to life.

Third Prize (£200): I’m going to tell you something because nobody else will by Teodora Vamvu

Author bio: Hailing from Bucharest, Romania, Teodora Vamvu is a marketing specialist at a national radio station. Her fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction have won contests, placed as finalists, been published, and/or included in anthologies from Globe Soup, Spillwords, MetaStellar, The Letter Review, F(r)iction, and Witness Magazine, to name a few. When she’s not writing, she’s reading or sleeping, and vice versa. Find her on Instagram: @teodoravamvu

Judge’s Comments: Teodora Vamvu’s visceral account of a miscarriage is forthright and upsetting, but also courageous and, ultimately, hopeful. Some of the striking imagery (‘the blood is vivid red like in a Rothko painting’, ‘blue and red lights of the ambulance make the cul-de-sac glow like it’s Christmastime’) creates moments of softness that contrast with and accentuate the jagged reality of physical and psychological pain experienced by the protagonist (‘starts to hurt so, so, so much, like bad period cramps but tenfold’ and ‘your ugly crying and sharp screams’). A hard-hitting, highly effective piece of flash fiction that lingers in the reader’s heart and mind.

Shortlist

Here are the entries that the judges selected for the shortlist (in alphabetical order by entry title). They are all brilliant, and we’re confident they will find homes in other competitions or publications in due course.

• Cycles of Absence by Hannah McLellan
• Everyone Knows by Seán McNicholl
• Genetics by Sue Trees
• Heathens by Letty Butler
• How to Stay Soft in a Hard City by Kirsty Talbot
• i’ll tell you when i’m brave enough by Nyra Selwyn
• Just a Week in Eternity by Charles Kitching
• Let the Waters of the Sky be Gathered in One Place by Lucy Grace
• Masks by Ekpenyong Kosisochukwu
• Mum and Dad, Muscle Cars and Highboys by Chris Cottom
• The Broth by David I. Hughes
• The Cinema by Christopher Drew
• The tyranny of unmarked graves by Dan Vevers

Longlist

Here are the entries that impressed enough to make the longlist (in alphabetical order by entry title).

• A Hammered Honeymoon by Ian Alexander Lobban
• Bless the Telephone by Natasha Kinsella
• Corroded by Nina Marriage
• Darkest Avalon by Charles Kitching
• Egged Bus No. 3 by Kevin Gerard Neill
• Emotionally Perfect by Tommy
• Final Whistle by Madeleine Armstrong
• Ginger by Miranda Yates
• Holding Hands by Eve Goff
• Joy and Marie, Robert et Raymond by Mike Horwood
• Lunula Moon by Adele Gallogly
• Maybe This Time by Uduak-Abasi Ekong
• Milk, shampoo, mangoes by Nyra Selwyn
• No Good Deed by Emily Mayson
• Renascens by Keith Fowkes
• She Thinks About Silly Putty by Robin Kalota
• sink (v) to slope away or to be withdrawn inwards by Emma Dandy
• Something About You by Hannah Retallick
• Sometimes I wonder what Jeanette Winterson is having for tea by Liz Gwinnell
• Stone Heart by Cherry Kent
• Sunrise, Once the World Is Saved by Joe Pearson
• The Accident by Jaime Gill
• The boy who salied over the horizon by Nicholas Wessels
• The Compliment Box by Timothy Collyer
• The Devil Winds by Michelle McAlister
• The Dosa Tax by Timothy Collyer
• The Other Way by Simon Linter
• The Plum Sea’s Lantern by Khudeeja Begum
• The Potato Pickers by Joanna Miller
• The Stains You Left by Salem Marshall
• There Was This Boy by Melinda Chopik
• Things My Brother Explains With Absolute Certainty by Jeffrey-Michael Kane
• Third Breast by Diana Gittins
• Two Cats by Christopher Drew
• Unlucky Carlos by Nicholas Wang
• Velcro Strip by Geraldine Terry
• Watching From a Distance by Salem Marshall
• What did you do, Baby Girl? by Sally Curtis
• When the ink runs dry by Ruth Bradshaw
• White doves & War drums by Nyra Selwyn
• White Noise by Vivian Lord
• You Will Be Forgotten by Suzanne Nelson
• Your Next Go by Richard Light

Thank you to everyone who entered. If you’d like to find out about our upcoming writing competitions – both free-to-enter and those with an entry fee such as the 100-Word Writing Competition (£1,000 top prize) – as well as writing prompts, book recommendations and more, sign up to our newsletter (we send only one email each month and will never share your email address or any other information with anyone else).