Category: Flash

East Bengal, 1971 by Mehreen Ahmed It was lunch time in Madhupur. Taramon, a motherless farmer’s daughter of 24, was just getting ready to sit down with her four siblings for lunch. Their father had left for the field early…

Something That Can Never be Held by Cathy Ulrich   You are being photographed with a stolen camera. You are pretending to smoke a cigar, you are wearing your best dress, you are holding a shotgun. You are going to…

Infanta by Carolyn Oliver after Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess Infanta, you dance as a gull sways on a salt breeze, as a fan swings closed between jewelled fingers, as a whisper stalls in a hot room. Eyes tally…

The anatomy of a hurdy-gurdy by Philip Charter The curve of the body is yours. Wooden lines live and breathe. I cradle you, as if you were still a part of me, but you are not. My instrument is angular…

Timeline: FlashBack’s Seventh Season In case you’ve missed any of these brilliant pieces, here is a round-up of the work we published in this past season, in chronological order.  (And, as always, you can find our entire back catalogue on…

Not a Rehearsal by Anne Summerfield We should have gone to Greenham and slept under the tarpaulins, under the stars. We said we would, knew too that there was more at stake than protest. Hadn’t I skipped my work’s Christmas…

Boye by Christine Collinson Before the battle, we said that Boye was bulletproof. A white devil-dog with a black heart and enchanted blood: a shapeshifter, a sorcerer. In woodcuts Boye appeared, alongside his princely master, arrayed with fangs and a…

Aetheris Avidi by Louise Mangos Favouring the Blitz over the risk of his three daughters marrying Irishmen, Dad brings us back to Putney from Ireland while the war is still in full swing. Betty and I have a date with…

The Colours in His Hair by Davena O’ Neill We only had one hour. Sixty minutes alone, without sympathetic looks or words of encouragement. Everyone asked me after where we’d gone, but I never told. ‘We lost track of time,’…

Erased by Winston Bribach The bosses told us Chinese to stay away from the photographer. Most didn’t need to be told. They didn’t want to lose their souls. I, too, couldn’t deny the magic captured by a single flash, but…