I previously announced that my piece “I’m Invited to Watch Them Feed Her Body Into the Incinerator” was highly commended in the 2026 National Flash Fiction Day Microfiction Competition, and now I’m excited to share my copy of this gorgeous anthology.
You can read the micros online HERE
and get your copy of the anthology now!
This has been a strange year for my writing… I’ve focused more on paid work, which is great for my bank account, but makes me feel really out of touch with the flash fiction community.
I still did some fun things, like writing during National Flash Fiction Day and taking part in the Ekphrastic Marathon. I wrote some books and outlines for major publishers, and that news will hopefully come out next year. I judged four contests for Flash Fiction Magazine and ghostwrote some books I’m really proud of, so I feel like I had a very creative year even if my submission spreadsheet isn’t reflecting that.
I only had 45 submissions this year, despite initially having a goal of submitting 5 pieces per month. I had 13 acceptances from those submissions. (I submitted 111 times in 2023, 134 in 2022, and 52 in 2021.)
I also only took one writing workshop (plus a few two-hour Zooms), while I used to take a lot more. I generate a lot of content during workshops because I thrive with the prompts and accountability, so I think that might be a big part of my lack of content this year.
I started writing reviews for MicroLit Almanac. Several were books I’d already read or wanted to read, but a few weren’t even on my radar, so I’m grateful I got the chance to read and review them, hopefully helping spread the word of these indie writers so they can get the attention they deserve.
In addition to the online stories and reviews you can read here, I had a flash fiction piece published in Stanchion’s Away from Home anthology and another in the Third Bullshit Lit Anthology.
If you need help polishing your work (flash fiction, short stories, novels – I do it all!), getting your ideas on the page, or marketing yourself or your book, I’m here to help!
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So this is now old news because I forgot to share it back in August, whoops!
I had a short story published in the Third Bullshit Lit Anthology: “Ecclesiastes 10:19.”
This is a piece I wrote in a Nancy Stohlman Pop Lit workshop and I submitted everywhere because I really wanted it out there. And now it is!
I feel like it’s especially fitting now, with the religious hypocrisy right in front of our faces… so ENJOY!
I’m thrilled to have a piece in the Away From Home anthology from Stanchion!
I wrote “Bonnie’s House” as a micro in a Sarah Freligh workshop – I know that’s not a surprise at this point, as most of my pieces that eventually get published start there! I loved the idea for this anthology because I’m obsessed with getting glimpses into other people’s houses, so I knew I didn’t want to miss my chance to explore that.
I can’t wait to read all the other amazing stories included in this anthology! It’s officially out on September 10th, but you can preorder the book here: Away From Home Anthology
I can’t believe that I forgot to log this submission on my spreadsheet, and therefore forgot to mention it in my 2023 Writing in Review post!
Last March, Gnashing Teeth Publishing posted on Twitter that they were tearing pages out of a book (Dead Girl Running by Christina Dodd) and sending them to anyone who requested one. Once you got a page, you’d create an erasure or blackout poem and send it back to be published in an anthology.
I love strange constraints and any type of project, so I requested a page. When it came in the mail, I think I was frozen for a week or two. I had no clue where to start. What if I blacked out a word I wanted back later??
I decided to take a photo of the pages and use the mark up feature on my phone to draft some poems. I’m really glad I took that approach, though I don’t remember changing a lot of the words. In fact, I kept taking away more. But it was nice to have the original page to look back on when I wanted. And once I completed my poem, I could carefully black out the right sections on the book page.
With that done, I mailed the page off and waited. And forgot about it, honestly! Then preorders were announced, so I preordered and forgot about it again! Which means I was pleasantly surprised by a book in my mailbox one day.
It was so cool to not only see my poem in this book, but to see how other people approached the erasure aspect of the project. There are some works of art in here! It’s also really interesting to see how many poems kind of fit together. Probably because the book is one cohesive work so it’s understandable there’d be some overlap in the poems, but it’s still fascinating!
Allison Renner Writes 