In support of the UAE’s Year of Reading, the NYUAD Literature and Creative Writing Program has teamed up with Tempo Magazine to co-sponsor a Flash Fiction Contest. The deadline for submissions is 1 April 2016.
“Flash fiction” is a unique genre of storytelling that happens quickly – in a flash. It is a very short, imagined story that instills a sense of surprise, or tension, or mystery, or drama, or all of these and then. . . it’s over. But if it’s well written and conceived, it will stay with readers like a distinct smell or taste: it will haunt them. Flash fiction can have a beginning, middle and end like a traditional short story, or it can drop us right in the midst of a scene, with characters talking and doing things in a way that immediately gets our attention and leaves us satisfied in the end. Perhaps the writer will take us somewhere unusual and unexpected. If it’s done artfully, we will be touched in some way, perhaps even transformed.
The Rules
Writers must be currently enrolled in an accredited undergraduate university program in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Stories must be written in English and make a connection to the idea of SEPARATION.
Stories will be judged on originality and the quality of the prose.
The maximum length is 750 words (not including the title and author’s information required below). Any submissions over 750 words will not be considered.
Submissions should be written in 12-point Times New Roman font.
A cover page must accompany each submission and should include the title of the story, the writer’s name, address, e-mail address, phone number and the name of his/her university. These items do not count toward the story’s length limit.
Submissions should take the form of a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) attached to an email sent to flashfictionNYUAD@com with “Flash Fiction” in the subject line.
The deadline for submissions is 23hrs 59minutes on the 1st of April. Anything received after then will not be considered.
Music is memory. Hearing a song or a piece of music, like thinking about one of the twenty-seven used cars I’ve owned, chauffeur me into my past.
I learned Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” on the guitar from my friend, Warren Wilson. I was living on a commune in New Hampshire. It was 1970, and I had never heard country blues before. Diddy-Dirty Money’s “I’m Coming Home” with Skylar Grey was the first rap tune I fell for unconditionally. It blends pop, with hip-hop and ballad.
I’m a sucker for ballads. I listened to the songs on this top-ten list of tunes about HOME while I was processing images and interviews for a film project I was working on with my wife, Joanne; it’s called Home Sick. I pretty near like everything Elvis ever recorded. His opening of Curly Putman’s “The Green Green Grass of Home” is so deep and sappy, it puts chills up my sleeve.
Paul Simon’s talent as songwriter and his harmonies with Art Garfunkel gave me a sense of musical hope when I first started writing songs myself in 1966. I was a sophomore in high school. Mohammed Ali declared himself a conscientious objector that year, and three years later when I dropped out of college, I did the same. In 1968 I heard Simon and Garfunkel perform together without a band, at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens, not far from where they grew up.
The surprise for me on this list – because new music always sneaks up me when I least expect it – is the hotel-room-recording by Cathy Burton and Eller van Buuren, “Surrender.” Simple and un-produced. I really can’t say enough about the other artists mentioned here, even John Denver. If there is something I love besides my wife and daughter, it’s music. I can’t imagine the world without it, or them.
1. Diddy-Dirty Money featuring Skylar Grey – Comin’ Home
2. Elvis Presley- Green Green Grass of Home
3. John Denver – Country Roads
4. Robert Johnson Sweet Home Chicago
5. Simon and Garfunkel – Homeward Bound
6. Dusty Springfield – I’m Coming Home Again
7. Cathy Burton and Eller van Buuren – Surrender
8. Joni Mitchell – Night Ride Home
9. Neil Young – Helpless
10. James Taylor – Carolina in my Mind
Jim Savio is a Lecturer in the NYUAD Writing Program. He publishes fiction, essays, and poetry.
