Flash Europa 28 – open for entries!
The Flash Europa 28 competition has extended its deadline and is still open for entries of flash fiction from writers aged 28 or younger from each EU member state.
‘After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.’ ―Philip Pullman
Flash Europa 28 is an opportunity for young writers from each of the 28 member states of the European Union to showcase their flash fiction to the Chinese online reader.
Through national competitions five stories will be selected from each country, translated into Chinese and distributed free of charge over a period of 28 weeks to Chinese audiences via multiple social media platforms.
Writers from each EU member state aged 28 or younger can enter with a story of 500 words or less set in the EU country of their nationality or residence. The competition is open now! **New Extended deadline: 15th September 2014**
Very short fiction is not a new genre, it has it roots in multiple literary traditions across the world. The art of brevity in storytelling and use of words has existed for centuries, perhaps nowhere more strongly than East Asia—China’s everyday chengyu 成语 and Japan’s renowned haiku poems, for example. What is changing, however, is that technology is facilitating a renaissance and popularisation—even democratisation—of very short fiction.
And there are eager audiences too. In the face of changing technology and the rapid pace of modern life, flash fiction is gaining new popularity. The highly mobile, multi-tasking and ever-connected reader is looking for and touched by minimal and spare reads, reads which capture life in our fast-paced and rapidly changing world. Over the course of this project, Chinese readers will be transported via their mobile devices to each of the 28 member states of the EU, one country each week, seeing the nations through the storytelling of their flash fiction writers.
The project is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to China, in association with the Bookworm, a China-based literary organisation. Literature Across Frontiers are delighted to be co-operating on this project. Please see http://www.flash-europa-28.org for more information about how to enter.