New flash fictions (no more than 500 words) in multiple genres that address the city. A guide book to the fictional city, all cities, any city: its markets, squares, cafés, hotels, parks, stations and ports; the main streets, side streets, back alleys, dead ends and the crossroads. Never identified, the city has a voice of its own.

This brilliant collection of flash fiction sparkles with originality and many of its images stayed with me; the mechanical cigarette machine which sounds like a 12 gauge shot gun being loaded, the commuter obsessing about another commuter’s shoes, the sense of safety, belonging and ownership you can experience while on a train, the ghosts you only see when you are sad, the 123 lost gloves mourning their partners, and the couple kissing in a public square aware that they are making a memory not just for themselves but for everyone else who witnesses it, an act that becomes part of the square’s collective history, embedding itself in the bones of the city. This collection of precision-crafted meditations on public spaces makes us realise that everywhere we go in a city we are only ever a few feet away from a writer jotting it all down in a their moleskin, helping us rethink our feelings about shared environments, crowds, transport and architecture – the throwaway beauty of urban life.

David Gaffney

A collection that exactly captures the restless mood of cities. In these stories, people connect and disconnect on journeys, in hotels, over coffee, in parks, markets and gardens. It feels as if we are walking alongside the characters, through teeming alleyways and side streets, along main roads and past monuments, experiencing the sounds, the sights and the smells.The stories  describe familiar things in interesting ways or lead you, like a guide book, to something new. Like a city dweller or visitor, you will want to return again and again and each time there will be more to relish.

Jude Higgins

Includes work from writers in Australia, Eire, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, USA, and right across the UK.

Annabel Banks
Melaina Barnes
Laura Besley
Maja Bodenstein
Jayne Buxton
Sarah-Clare Conlon
Rosamund Davies
Roland Denning
Liam Hogan
Cath Holland
Belinda Huang
Catherine Jones
Aisling Keogh
Jess Kilby
Jasmin Kirkbride
Stuart Larner
Wes Lee
Emma Lee
Cathy Lennon
Ash Lim
C.A. Limina
Máire Malone
David Mathews
Nicholas McGaughey
Rachael McGill
Dave Murray
Pedro Basso Neves
Alexandra Penland
Cherry Potts
Matthew Pountney
Arna Radovich
Kam Rehal
Jane Roberts
Reshma Ruia
Jesse Sensibar
Shamini Sriskandarajah
Miriam Sorrentino
Patty Tomsky
Evleen Towey
Nic Vine
Rob Walton
Steven Wingate