Angela James
@olangela.bsky.social
Lover and writer of flash fiction. Obsessor over comedy and Americana music. Lawyer in the midst of a midlife (or late-life, if being honest) crisis. Whooping it up at being on the Wigleaf Top Fifty long list.
It'd mean everything to me if you preorder my book. But definitely pick up some other Malarkey titles. They're all amazing reads 💙💙💙
Malarkey@malarkeybooks.bsky.social · 4d agoWill’s book comes out in April and it is beautiful. As it’s our first book of strictly flash fiction we are offering a flash sale. Code AFTERLASTCALL gets 50% off anything in our store today only (8/1/26). Great day to preorder Will’s book but the code will also work on all of our other titles!
Hereafter by @sfreligh.bsky.social is a novella-in-flash that feels like a guiding light for the genre. a tiny book I read slowly because I didn’t want it to end, even if I cried at every other flash. head to @adhocfiction.bsky.social and get your tissues ready #smokelong #blurbchallenge
Mercury has been in retrograde in Cancer since last month and will only be retrograde for a couple more days. Why am I telling you this? Well, this is my most Mercury Retrograde ever. So if you feel drawn back into the past lately, this story is for you. Let's play What If?
Ellipsis Zine@ellipsiszine.bsky.social · 2w ago'The What If? Game: Advanced Version' flash fiction from @chelseastickle.bsky.social Tossing and turning in your twin bed, you try to understand your place in every room. Sleep won’t visit until you’ve exhausted yourself. Read more: www.ellipsis-zine.com/writing/the-...
Today I've got a new flash in @reckonreview.bsky.social about disappearing fireflies and family. Thank you to the editors for publishing it. This story saw many drafts over the years, but I'm glad this is the one out there. reckonreview.com/life-cycle-o...
LIFE CYCLE OF A DOMESTIC FIREFLY | Fiction by Chelsea Stickle – Reckon Review
reckonreview.com
Instinct will tell you to leave space to savour each story in @marioaliberto3.bsky.social 's All the Dead We Have Yet To Bury. Don't. Race through. Gulp it down in one go. Let it roll over you, then come up gasping. #blurbchallenge @smokelong.bsky.social Just trust me on this.
'Different Folks' flash fiction from @bsherm36.bsky.social The week after Harry died, Helen spray painted the toilet gold. Is it meant to be ironic, her sister, Liz, asked. Or is it because he enjoyed spending time there? Read more: www.ellipsis-zine.com/writing/diff...
You can never go wrong reading @travisflatt.bsky.social !!
Coleman Bigelow@cbigs.bsky.social · 3w agoYou’ve got to read @travisflatt.bsky.social latest chapbook. Here’s me reading it on the lovely NJ Transit, and like NJ transit, this collection is full of constant surprises. The writing is always clever, unexpected and magic. The story “She’s a miracle” is incredible. #blurbchallenge #smokelong
Thrilled to share that my new collection—Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment—is available for pre-order! It’s a book about belonging & becoming & finding our way together. I hope you will read it. ❤️ www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...
Rebecca Halsey on what would surprise writers about Flash Fiction Online, her worst fear as an editor, how the submission queue is managed and so much more. Here: smokelong-quarterly.mn.co/posts/102449...
The Last Day by Kim Magowan is a delight, fearlessly digging into the often unspoken nuances of women’s relationships with their friends, families or lovers. Plus: classy but kinda slutty women receive significant representation. #blurbchallenge @smokelong.bsky.social @kimmagowan.bsky.social
Blur by Dan Crawley speaks to my soul three years on. I dreamed I saw Dan in a Mexican bar spinning Jamiroiqui, likely representing my delight at the tenderness and wit with which he treats his characters in seemingly real moments. #blurbchallenge @smokelong.bsky.social @danbillyc.bsky.social
Dudes!! My beloved Bruiser has nominated my little flash about the continued lowkey foxiness of decagenarian Dick Van Dyke (who is still with us and still awesome!)!!!
BRUISER@bruisermag.com · last mo.
Thrilled to have my weird martyrs story "Ontkommer" in @wigleaf.bsky.social's Top 50! Many thanks to the Wigleaf team, guest judge @andrewporter01.bsky.social, and @djpoissant.bsky.social for publishing this in @theflreview.bsky.social! cah.ucf.edu/floridarevie...
Ontkommer - The Florida Review
Kim Magowan My husband is Catholic and more devoted than I like, though it didn’t stop Matt from marrying me. In September, our ten-year-old son Ethan will be confirmed—a strange verb. As babies, bo...
cah.ucf.edu
Congratulations @olangela.bsky.social and @francesorrok.bsky.social, as well as all of our contributors, staff, and friends who made the top 50 and long list!
Me? On the Wigleaf Long List? Not sure I would have even had the gall to wish for such a thing! Thank you, Kim for being the absolute best editor! And writer— top fifty and long list woohoo!
Kim Magowan@kimmagowan.bsky.social · last mo.Also, love seeing so many writer friends on the @wigleaf.bsky.social Top 50 and Longlist. Yay @brttnyblm.bsky.social! Yay @mczyzniejewski.bsky.social! Yay all of you! Special hoorays for the two @pitheadchapel.bsky.social writers on the Longlist, @olangela.bsky.social and Frances Orrok.
"That last morning I watched him make the guest bed, yank wool blankets smooth over sheets, a precise geometry of corners,...." My lord, this powerful tiny story by @sfreligh.bsky.social 💙💙💙
Sarah Freligh@sfreligh.bsky.social · last mo.New story up at 100 Word Story! Thanks, Michelle! 100wordstory.org/the-suicides...
ICYMI Microfiction by Angela James! @olangela.bsky.social “neither death solid proof of my lingering hunch that dicks take a lot out of a woman” www.claudineliterary.com/angelajames
Angela James | A Belated Happy Birthday to the First Lady of Erotic Cinema
claudineliterary.com
I'm celebrating the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day! Thrilled to have my debut flash fiction "No One Will Know Unless It Takes" in FlashFlood. Thank you @natflashfictionday.bsky.social Shout out to SmokeLong Fitness' March Micro Marathon for sparking this story! @smokelong.bsky.social
Debut Flash: 'No One Will Know Unless It Takes' by Jenna Martin-Trinka
Right before you turn forty-one, you will get your IUD removed, the second one you’ve had, and you will not tell your husband. Your hands wi...
flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com
@pleomorphic2.bsky.social takes us to the line in this visceral piece - but thus far shall we go and no further 😢
National Flash Fiction Day@natflashfictionday.bsky.social · 2mo agoFlashFlood: 'All the Ways We Died' by Sumitra Singam #nffd2026
FlashFlood: 'The Roller Derby Girls Skate Circles Around My Teenage Heart' by Travis Flatt #nffd2026
'The Roller Derby Girls Skate Circles Around My Teenage Heart' by Travis Flatt
They detune my stratocaster. They flat my Mustang. They butter my fingers. They tear open my bad boy mask and expose my self-image, circle closer and closer like sharks. They gnaw inward, the way certain fungi eat trees. They fog the edges of my mirror, tightening toward the center of my face down to the middle of my mustache where nothing grows. And here I thought I was hot shit. Before each match, I’ll comb up my pompadour, but by the time I bike to the rink, my hair’s a limp, greasy center part. My leather jacket’s sweat-soaked; my English Leather’s evaporated to the scent of mom’s cats. I sit alone in the bleachers, slink past the front row of boyfriends and girlfriends, who recline smoking cigarettes, up past the parents. Say, “Excuse me, sorry.” Sit with little siblings, where the boys pinch the girls, and the girls play with paper pyramids that read the future. Most evenings, I wake screaming, “That’s the Way (I Like It)” thumping in my ears, stink of the rink in my sinuses—armpit, corndogs—and cotton candy on my tongue. In my dreams, I fight them off with a trash bag of mixtapes through crisscrossing corridors of some labyrinthine high school. In the fall, they open try-outs. I skate for the Roller Derby Girls. If you can’t beat them, join them; if you can’t charm them, disarm them. I make waterboy. They dress me up as some fuzzy thing with purple spots to pump the crowd between jams. I roll the rink at half time, hands clasped and raised by Roller Derby Girls to roaring applause. That’s all I ever wanted: to be greased wheels on waxed Northern maple, to unself myself and spin spin spin. ---
dlvr.it
Thrilled to share I won the 2026 Vermont Writers’s Prize. It’s co-sponsored by Vermont Magazine and Green Mountain Power, & the coolest part is that Katherine Paterson was one of the judges. “Bridge to Terabithia” was the first novel I ever read when I was 8 years old. www.vtmag.com/post/vt-writ...
VT WRITERS' 2026 PRIZE - Winning Entries
The Apprentice by Emily Rinkema (Prose Winner)The first time Ellen visited the butcher was a month after Colin died. She was driving home from Hannaford and before she had time to think about why she...
vtmag.com
Sending this one out into the ether again for the start of Pride month. In the current climate, queer expression, community and joy can feel like the most radical political acts. Thanks to @natflashfictionday.bsky.social for publishing this one 🏳️🌈 flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2024/06/ordi...
'Ordinary Miracles for a Good Christian Boy' by James Montgomery
Perhaps it was the parade, how it glittered, with its floats, floating? Or the cheers of the rainbow-clad crowds, who raised their flags and...
flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com
You guys! My vintage porny micro in the great @claudineliterary.bsky.social !!! Thank you @dehardy.bsky.social !!!
Claudine: A Literary Magazine@claudineliterary.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew Microfiction by Angela James!!!! @olangela.bsky.social “my then husband suggested we try porn to spice things up, with me insisting, as the one with taste, on making the selection” www.claudineliterary.com/angelajames
Thrilled to announce I’ll be stepping up as an associate fiction editor at @theoffingmag.bsky.social!! Looking forward to diving in!!! 🙏🏼💚🎉
Maybe my favourite from @lorifontanes.bsky.social yet…
LM “Gory” Fontanes 👻@lorifontanes.bsky.social · 3mo agospecial shout-out of thanks to @smokelong.bsky.social fam & @theprideroars.bsky.social for their support of earlier drafts of this story—u keep me going, skeeps! 🙏🙏🙏 epistemiclit.com/issue-eight/...
I've just learned that Unsolicited Press has nominated "Pardon Me for Moonwalking" for The Maya Angelou Book Award. This prize was founded in 2020 to honor the legacy of the Missouri-born author. An thrill to be nominated!
unsolicitedpress.com
This is like if Ed Tom Bell had a third dream at the end of No Country for Old Men and in that third dream there was no horn full of fire or an existential crisis and instead a silver lining to be found in Dick Van Dyke's chest hair bsky.app/profile/brui...
BRUISER@bruisermag.com · 7mo agoI confide that I’ve been thinking a lot about Dick Van Dyke lately and even had a romantic dream about him. “Dick as he is now or like when he was young?” my husband asks. “Now.” “Sounds more like a nightmare.” A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR by @olangela.bsky.social www.bruisermag.com/James_Spoonful
Book 3 of 2026: @nassos.bsky.social's Sour Cherry Dreamlike and somehow both lush and spare at the same time, Sour Cherry is a lyrical novel about a man bringing ruin everywhere he goes--especially to the women in his orbit. If you like the "literary" side of Gothic fairytales, you'll love this.
