Sunday, September 12, 2010

introducing thirteen

 I've been busy this month getting the first quarterly review of my flash fiction website out the door.  And it's here now!


features the best of the first thirteen weeks of


In this review, you’ll find the best stories from 52|250's first quarter, plus an interview with an artist, ten new creative non-fiction stories written by our most loyal flashers, and a page where the Editors share a little more, too.


For anyone new to these pages, perhaps you are wondering what 52|250 A Year of Flash is. It started back in May, as a way to discipline myself to write more.  The idea was to produce one piece of flash fiction every week for a year:  52 weeks, 250 words each week.  I mentioned the idea to my high school pal John Chapin (who also happens to be a writing instructor) who responded, “I’m in!”  So we created a website, and made an announcement here and there. The first week saw 17 submissions — 17 different stories about Breadfruit.  We followed that week with a new theme, Fancy Me. Next came Little Worlds... and so on. People submitted theme ideas and art, and more and more stories rolled in. Soon Walter Bjorkman joined our team and helped streamline the site and prettify the code. And we’ve been writing every week since. We’ve just published stories for Week #17:  We Are Not Responsible. And this week -- Week 18 -- has everyone writing about Lucky Number.

In short, 52|250 grew almost overnight from an idea to a community. We’ve had over 70 people participate in the project, and it’s still growing.  And now we are here, with our first beautiful Quarterly Review.

If you are hearing about 52|250 for the first time, feel free to wander over to our site and send in your submissions — art, themes, or flash.

And thanks for stopping by and reading thirteen. Which, this week, is my lucky number.