Our amazing reading team has finished reviewing entries in Hippocampus Magazine’s third annual We Love Short Shorts Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction, and we are thrilled to announce this year’s winners.
During the month of February, we received 308 entries, each one up to 250 words. This year’s stories explored moments of kindness, friendship, parental love, grief and loss, mourning, and serendipity. In the end, we chose three pieces as our contest finalists, and soon we’ll share each of their stories on our magazine website. That’s also when we will reveal our grand prize winner!
Stories will go live May 4, along with our May-June 2026 issue. At that time, we will also update this post to reflect the announcement. Our grand-prize winner will receive $250 and publication of their story. Each of the two runners-up will receive $100 and publication.
Flash CNF Contest Finalists
Here are our three finalists, listed in alphabetical order by title:
- “Socks” by Joe Kapitan
- “Tag” by Noah Browne
- “You Can Rehome a Cat But Not a Kid” by Tracie Adams
Honorable Mentions: The Short Shorts Shortlist
Our reading team also identified five honorable mentions for their excellence in capturing the essence of the flash form. These five short-listed stories will appear in future issues of the magazine:
- “Between the Sink and the Door” by Eric Goldfarb
- “Box” by Matthew Trumbull
- “Daisies” by Ofrit Peres
- “Snapshot” by Jocelyn Lovelle
- “The Bedsheet” by Victoria Windsor
Congratulations to our finalists and our honorable mentions! And thank you to each writer who entered this year’s contest. We look forward to reading your work again in the future!
–Wendy Fontaine, flash editor
