[Editors Note: This post was updated the evening of May 5 to reflect the winning announcement and to add links to each story.]
Our remarkable reading team has finished reviewing entries in Hippocampus Magazine’s second annual We Love Short Shorts Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction, and we are thrilled to announce this year’s winners.
In February, we received 320 entries, each one up to 250 words. These pieces expressed a wide variety of themes, including loss, death, jealousy, anxiety, delight, and tradition. In the end, we chose three pieces as our contest finalists, and soon we’ll share each of their stories on our magazine website. That’s also when we will reveal our grand prize winner!
Stories will go live May 5 with our May-June 2025 issue. We will also update this post to reflect the announcement. The grand-prize winner will receive $250 and publication of their story. Each of the runners-up will receive $100 and publication.
Flash CNF Contest Finalists & Winner
Here are our three finalists, listed in alphabetical order by title:
- “Ghouls” by Hillary Wentworth
- “Greed” by Tori Walters
- “Say the Word” by Annamaria Formichella – WINNER!
Read their stories and see author bios on their live stories, linked above.
Contest Shortlist
Our reading team also identified four honorable mentions for their excellence in capturing the essence of the flash form. These stories will appear in future issues of the magazine.
Here are our four short-list stories:
- “grief always has a future” by JJ Pena
- “Mink” by Kathryn Ganfield
- “The Ice in Spring” by Matthew Trumbull
- “There there” by Sonja Larsen
Congratulations to our finalists and our honorable mentions! And thank you to each writer who entered this year’s contest. We look forward to reading your work again in the future!
— Wendy Fontaine, flash editor
