It is an honour and a joy to have Flash Fiction Armagh included again in the AE Festival in Lurgan and Armagh 2024. I attended it last year and was blown away by how much I enjoyed the events. It was an excellent opportunity to learn about the great artist and writer AE Russell, also known as George Russell. By all accounts, he was intelligent and talented, a humble man, and an all-around wonderful human being. I’m looking forward to learning more about him this year. The full programme is available here: The submission window was extremely short – just three weeks – so we were stunned at th ..read more

Happy New Year everyone and here’s to getting 2024 off to a great start! Flash Fiction Armagh is thrilled to announce the readers for the next event – Flash Fiction Saturday Night at the Museum on the 10th of February 2024 at the Armagh County Museum, The Mall, Armagh in conjunction with the exhibition focusing on Armagh writer, John O’Connor, and taking the theme from the title of his book Come Day, Go Day. These words are a line from the song The Ballad of Old Seth Davy, also known as Whiskey on a Sunday, about a street entertainer in Liverpool in the 1890s who entertained people with his pu ..read more

One of the best things about facilitating workshops is the privilege of watching people dig deep and bare their souls. Writing takes great courage, especially that hard-edged writing that sits in your chest bursting to be unleashed. It was wonderful to witness that today while I facilitated a workshop for a bunch of brave (not least because they let me be their facilitator) and talented writers. So, on the heels of a lovely time teaching a workshop on flash fiction, it is my great pleasure to announce that submissions are now open for the next Flash Fiction Armagh! In February 2024, the Armag ..read more

Flash Fiction Armagh is delighted to announce the lineup for their next event in Long Meadow Cider as part of the award-winning Armagh Food and Cider Festival 2023. The readers are (in no particular order): Mari Lara reading Everybody Should Go Through a Hurricane Seán McNichol reading Ours Maria Mc Gilly reading You Left Me Behind Andrew Lennon reading The Wolfe in the Saddle Joseph Conlan reading Way Back When Niamh Scullion reading Line Pat Mc Kenna reading The Fairy Thorn Allister Kyle reading The Postal Therapy Emma Gibson reading Mermaid Byddi Lee reading Sweet The event takes place on ..read more

We lucked out with the weather. Well, in the Donegal weather sense, and yes, two weeks earlier would have been better but thank goodness, we didn’t leave it another week or else… My relationship with the Donegal weather has been a stormy one. As soon as I hit the border the skies cloud over and the temperature drops. I’ve seen the temperature reading for Armagh be 21 C and sunny but in Donegal, I’m shivering in 14 C under grey clouds. Last year, in fact, we had that projected really hot day. Barra had been on the weather forecast for a week telling us that we were going to get an extreme high ..read more

I’ve neglected my blog this past wee while, but I’ve been inspired to write something after catching up with my friend (amazing writer and Flash Fiction Armagh reader) Kerry Buchannan’s blog detailing her sailing/boating journey from Ireland to the Mediterranean via the waterways of France. It’s a highly entertaining and (as aforementioned) inspiring read. You can catch it at https://kerrybuchanan.com/blog-2/. At the weekend, we decided to embark on a little adventure ourselves – to climb Camlough Mountain. Camlough is in South Armagh. Okay so it’s not quite in the same realm as an exciting s ..read more

It is with great pleasure and a fair dollop of pride that we are announcing that Flash Fiction Armagh will be part of the John Hewitt International Summer School here in Armagh this summer. The festival runs from Monday 24th July 2023 to Saturday 29th July 2023 and the Flash Fiction Armagh event takes place on Friday 28th July at 7 pm in the Marketplace Theatre. This is a showcase event with readers chosen from those who have already read over the last four years, and we are delighted to welcome back the following readers, (in no particular order): Rachel Toner reading Not a Child of the Troub ..read more

On the 18th of April 2023, around midday, I opened up my emails and found seven emails that had arrived in quick succession from Facebook. Unfortunately for me, they’d be sitting for about an hour. The first one, sent at 10.34 am, asked if I’d added a phone number. I hadn’t. It came with the message ‘…if this was you, you don’t need to do anything…’ But it wasn’t me. It’s a stupid premise because if you don’t get the message Facebook/Meta assumes it was you who made the changes. Two minutes after that Facebook/Meta sent another message. ‘Did you just reset your password?’ No, I didn’t. And in ..read more

We had a wonderful night on Saturday night in the beautiful venue of Aonach Mhacha as part of the AE Russell Festival. The flash fiction stories fair blew us away. The wonderful Cathy Carson, who simultaneously made our hearts swell and our eyes smart with her beautiful and masterfully crafted story Copper Pennies has generously reviewed each of the other writers over on her Facebook page. So if you are on Facebook, it’s worth hopping over to read her thoughts on it. We’ve collected her posts and shared them on the Armagh Writers’ page too. If you’d like to watch the writers read their stories ..read more

At first, it seems a bleak theme – Lost Childhood – but it brought in a record number of entries for the Flash Fiction Armagh at the AE Festival event happening on 1st April 2023 in Aonach Mhacha. These spellbinding stories covered a huge range: disappointment, betrayal, bereavement, perspective, trauma, courage and a yearning for the people we once were and might yet be. Ultimately what emerges is the story of how we connect as humans through our vulnerability, tenderness and compassion. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but what I will say is that you will be amazed, moved and motivat ..read more