n. A very short literary work, typically no more than a few hundred words.
2004
But do not confuse Lee's columns on topical issues with her "micro-fiction" — a collection of very short stories, some only a few hundred words, written in the dreamy, breathless quality of … confessional pulp fiction from the 1950s.
2003
From Carolyn Kremers' nonfiction workshop, where I found out that Annie Dillard had made up (made up!) the beginning of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," to Frank Soos' remarks on how to find closure in a short story to Nancy Lord's workshop on miniatures and microfiction, I furiously took notes until I became so restless I had to escape to the bathroom to jot flash fiction on toilet paper.
1996 (earliest)
The Winnipeg literary quarterly Prairie Fire is holding three writing contests: the short fiction deadline is June 30, poetry must be in by Sept. 30, and the 500-word micro-fiction category closes Nov. 30.
The literary category of the extremely short prose piece — an apparent natural in this age of hurry sickness and the just-in-time lifestyle — is a genre desperately searching for a moniker that will stick. Besides micro-fiction, other labels that have been tried on are sudden fiction (1986), flash fiction (1987), instant fiction (1995), and short short (1986). Pieces with the rhythm and cadence of poetry might be called prose poems (1842), instead. In his introduction to the book Great American Prose Poems, editor David Lehmann sums up this nomenclatural confusion in the title of a lecture: "Prose poem, short short, or couldn't finish?"
Gareth Branwyn passed along the following note after I first posted this term:
Gareth Branwyn passed along the following note after I first posted this term:
I started a micro-fiction topic on The Well BBS in May 1995. Don't know where I got the word from:
bb.113: Micro-Fiction Corner
bb.113.0: Shane, the chiselled cabin boy (gareth) Wed 17 May 95 10:32
Who has time to read novels anymore…short stories even?!
Micro-fiction—stories of a paragraph or less—is the answer for
today's riot nrrrd stuck on fast-forward.
Let's write some.