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Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. She teaches online at 52|250 A Year of Writing

Michelle is Reviews Editor of Landfall, Assistant Editor for the international Best Small Fictions series and founder of National Flash Fiction Day NZ. Recent anthology work includes Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand, edited with Paula Morris and James Norcliffe (Otago University Press, 2020), Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (Canterbury University Press 2018; co-editor), Flash Fiction International (W. W. Norton 2015; associate editor) and Flash Then and Now: An Anthology (forthcoming 2021; co-edited with John Wentworth Chapin). Since 2020, Michelle has been curating, with Witi Ihimaera, Love in the Time of COVID: A Chronicle of a Pandemic, with an anthology forthcoming in 2023.

Michelle has guest edited at SmokeLong Quarterly, Reflex Fiction and other journals, and has judged competitions in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad, including the 2021 & 2922 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award and the 2020 Lilian Ida Smith Award, as well as competitions for the South Island Writers’ Association, the International Writers’ Workshop, the Whangārei Poetry Walk, NorthWrite’s collaboration competition, the NYC Challenge and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. Her poetry, fiction, travel writing, creative nonfiction and reviews have been widely published and anthologised. Her book, the everrumble (Ad Hoc Fiction 2019), a small novel in small forms, was long-listed in The Guardian’s Not-The-Booker Prize, featured in Verb Wellington’s digital programme and nominated for the James Tait Memorial Prize and the Pushcart Prize. Her new collection of short fiction, the other side of better, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in June 2021.

michelleelvy.com

James Norcliffe is an award-winning poet, novelist and short story writer with work appearing in journals world-wide and translated into several languages. His publications include a collection of short stories, eight collections of poetry — most recently Villon in Millerton (AUP) and Shadow Play (Proverse) — and several award-winning novels for young people including The Loblolly Boy (Longacre/Random) and its successor The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer (Longacre/Random). His most recent books for young people are Felix and the Red Rats (Longacre/Random) 2012 and The Pirates and the Nightmaker (Longacre/Random) forthcoming 2015.Besides his long list of publications, he also poetry editor for the Christchurch Press.  Many readers will know him from his long-time involvement in Takahē magazine. Meanwhile, he has worked more recently, with Harry Ricketts and Siobhan Harvey as editor of the major anthology Essential New Zealand Poems – Facing the Empty Page (Godwit/Random, 2014).

James Norcliffe’s flash fiction is most recently included in Flash Fiction International (W W Norton, 2015). His website and blog is here

Gail Ingram writes and lives on the Port Hills of Christchurch. She is the author of Contents Under Pressure, a novella told in poetry, published by Pūkeko Publications in 2019, and the editor of two anthologies The Unnecessary Invention of Punctuation (NZPS 2018) and after the cyclone (NZPS 2017).

Her work has been widely published and anthologised in journals such as Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Atlanta Review, Blue Five Notebook, Cordite Poetry Review, Fib Review and Bonsai. Her awards include winning both the Caselberg (2019) and New Zealand Poetry Society (2016) international poetry competitions, and placed third in Poets Meet Politics (UK) 2018 international poetry competition. In fiction, awards include runner up Flash Fiction Day NZ Micro Madness, shortlist for Fish Short Prize, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

As well editing for Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, she also is a joint poetry editor for takahē magazine. She teaches at Write On: School for Young Writers and holds a Master of Creative Writing (Distinction). You can find her at https://www.theseventhletter.nz/

Vaughan Rapatahana commutes between Hong Kong SAR, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genres in Māori, English and other languages. Though perhaps best known for his poetry, his bibliography also includes prose fiction, educational material, academic articles, philosophy and language critiques.

Vaughan experienced a varied career before becoming a writer, working as a secondary schoolteacher,
housepainter, storeman, freezing worker, and special education advisor. He was poetry editor of the
Māori and Indigenous Review Journal until 2011. He was a semi-finalist in the Proverse Prize for Literature in 2009 and highly commended in the 2013 erbacce poetry prize (from 6000+ entrants). He won the inaugural Proverse Poetry prize in 2016, the same year as his poetry collection Atonement was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines. His work has also been featured in Best New Zealand Poems 2017 and Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (2018).

Vaughan has a PhD in existential philosophy from University of Auckland. More at his New Zealand Book Council page. You can also find him interviewing poets and reviewing new work at jacket2.

Rachel Smith‘s writing has been published in journals and anthologies, in Aotearoa and overseas including Best Small Fictions 2020 and Best Microfiction 2019. She was fiction editor for takahē in 2017-2018 and contributing editor for Best Microfiction 2021.

@rachelmsmithnz1 http://rachelmsmithnz.wix.com/rachel-smith

Sam Averis is from Christchurch, New Zealand, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He is a member of the South Island Writers’ Association, and a close-knit online critique group.

In addition to several pieces in Flash Frontier since 2015, he has been published in Psychopomp Magazine, Shotgun Honey, and has stories forthcoming in Takahē and Geometry.

In 2016 he had two pieces highly commended in the National Flash Fiction Day competition, and studied at Hagley Writers’ Institute where he won the Margaret Mahy award for best portfolio.

He posts links to his published stories on his website, and you can get in touch with him on twitter @Sam_Serif.