Theatre director Ebrahim Poshtkoohi will hold a flash fiction competition named ‘The Last Pomegranate in the World.’
Short stories or flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category. Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300 words, while others consider stories as long as 1000 words to be flash fiction.
The genre is quite new in Iran, and is a variable between poetry and prose, Honaronline reports.
The competition aims at introducing talented and innovative artists. “We want to connect the literary mind and theater, because I believe all branches of art are related,” Poshtkoohi said.
He said his Titowak Theatre Group, is holding talks with veteran literature and theatre artists to get their support for the event. Each participant may submit up to five “10-word fictional works.”
The title of the event is taken from a book of the same name written by Bachtyar Ali, Kurdish author. “The competition is to elicit interest in reading,” said Poshtkoohi.
The works will be judged by Behrouz Gharibpour, renowned theatre director, Shams Langroudi, contemporary poet and author, Asadollah Amraee, author and translator, Roya Nonahali, theatre actor and director, and Poshtkoohi.
Enthusiasts can submit their short fiction via email or instagram. The winners will be announced on November 28.
Many Definitions
Many terms for this category exist, including micro fiction, micro narrative, postcard fiction, short short, and sudden fiction, though distinctions are sometimes drawn among some of these terms; for example, sometimes 1000 words is considered the cutoff between “flash fiction” and the slightly longer short story “sudden fiction”. The terms “micro fiction” and “micro narrative” are sometimes defined as below 300 words, and include these diminutive subcategories: the drabble (100 words), nanofiction (55 words), and twitter fiction, aka twitterature (140 characters, or about 23 words).
The term “short short story” was the most commonly used from the early 20th century until about 2000, when it was overtaken by “flash fiction.”
One of the first known usages of flash fiction in reference to the literary style was the 1992 anthology Flash Fiction: Seventy-Two Very Short Stories. Editor James Thomas stated that the editors’ definition of a “flash fiction” was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literary magazine.
In China the style is frequently called a “smoke long” or “palm-sized” story, with the comparison being that the story should be finished before the reader can finish smoking a cigarette.
Very short fiction has roots going back to prehistory, recorded at origin of writing, including fables and parables, notably Aesop’s Fables in the west, and Panchatantra and Jataka tales in India. Later examples include the tales of Nasreddin and Zen koans such as ‘The Gateless Gate’.
Very short literary works in other genres include fragments and essays, such as the Japanese ‘Zuihitsu’ genre.
