Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories From Around the World is an anthology of flash fiction that has lived on my bookshelf for a number of years now. All eighty-six of these stories served as mentors for me during my initial discovery of flash nearly seven years ago now. Each story is it’s own perfect snow globe, it’s own flash of lightning.

Each story collected and curated by James Thomas, Robert Shapard, and Christopher Merril is a masterpiece. And what makes them so masterful? You don’t have to be a flash enthusiast to appreciate them.

When I first picked up this book, it was because I was curious – what is flash fiction? Little did I know the bookshelf staple it would become.

“For me, a very short story should do four basic things: obviously it should tell a story; it should be entertaining; it should be thought-provoking; and, if done well enough, it should invoke an emotional response.”

Robert Swartwood

Each of these stories embodies this ideal of flash. As an aspiring writer of flash, I read them over, and over, and over again. Now, as a grad student with a little more of a foothold and a little more knowledge, I turn to studying this book again.

More Than Just Stories

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

Mark Twain

This quote from Mark Twain is one of many gathered at the end of the anthology in a section of the book called “Flash Theory.” This chapter was not one I appreciated at first, much to my detriment.

“Flash Theory” is now the piece of this anthology that holds most of my attention. Having graduated from the stories–that I can nearly recite from heart–I find myself deeply appreciative of the inclusion of so many different definitions and opinions of flash.

These differences are what flash is all about. It’s the only genre dictated completely by length rather than any other parameters. It has a long and storied history. While the term flash fiction wasn’t coined until sometime around the 1990’s, folk tales and aboriginal tales and more can all be considered flash.

“Flash has always been a form of experiment, of possibility.”

Introduction / Flash Fiction International

An International Look

The other truly impressive thing about this anthology, is its international scope. There are stories from Greece, Chile, Vietnam, Germany, Israel, Poland. Thomas, Shapard, and Merrill picked these stories from ten thousand finalists.

Perhaps most impressive to me out of all, is this recognition of the global reach of flash. Flash is just the American name for what has quickly risen to become a global phenomenon. Back when this book was published, 2015, this phenomenon was new, and exciting. Now, most online journals accept and encourage flash submissions in both fiction and nonfiction.

In the introduction of Flash Fiction International, they list different names for flash around the world.

“In Latin America it may be a micro, in Denmark a kortprosa, in Bulgaria a mikro razkaz. […] [K]nown in Portuguese as minicontos, in German as Kurzestgeschichten, in Irish as splancfhicsin, in Italian as microstorias . . . and in English as flash fiction.”

Introduction / Flash Fiction International