Suzanne Vincent is the editor-in-chief of Flash Fiction Online. That’s what people think anyway. Actually, she’s really a pretty ordinary middle-aged woman packing a few extra pounds and a few more gray hairs than she’s comfortable with. As a writer, she leans toward the fantasy spectrum, though much of what she writes is difficult to classify. Slipstream? Isn’t that where we stick stories when we just can’t figure out where else they go? Suzanne’s first professional publication was right here at FFO, published before she joined the staff: “I Speak the Master’s Will,” — a story she’s still very proud of. While she doesn’t actually have time to blog anymore, she once did. You can still read her ancient posts on writing at The Slushpile Avalanche. Suzanne keeps a house full of kids (3), a husband (1), and pets (too many to number) in Utah, USA. Yes, she’s a Mormon. No, there isn’t another wife. Mormons haven’t actually practiced polygamy since the 1890s. Too bad. She’d love to have another woman around to wash dishes and do laundry.

Bruce Holland Rogers has a home base in Eugene, Oregon, the tie-dye capital of the world. He writes all types of fiction: SF, fantasy, literary, mysteries, experimental, and work that’s hard to label.

For six years, Bruce wrote a column about the spiritual and psychological challenges of full-time fiction writing for Speculations magazine. Many of those columns have been collected in a book, Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer (an alternate selection of the Writers Digest Book Club). He is a motivational speaker and trains workers and managers in creativity and practical problem solving.

He has taught creative writing at the University of Colorado and the University of Illinois. Bruce has also taught non-credit courses for the University of Colorado, Carroll College, the University of Wisconsin, and the private Flatiron Fiction Workshop. He is a member of the permanent faculty at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program, a low-residency program that stands alone and is not affiliated with a college or university. It is the first and so far only program of its kind. Currently he is teaching creative writing and literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, on a Fulbright grant.

Adapted from Wikipedia: Hector Hugh Munro (December 18, 1870 – November 13, 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. “The Open Window” may be his most famous, with a closing line (“Romance at short notice was her speciality”) that has entered the lexicon.

Adapted from Wikipedia: Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and one of the most popular of all time, responsible for some of English literature’s most iconic characters.

Many of his novels, with their recurrent theme of social reform, first appeared in magazines in serialised form, a popular format at the time. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next installment. The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print.

His work has been praised for its mastery of prose and unique personalities by writers such as George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, though the same characteristics prompted others, such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, to criticise him for sentimentality and implausibility.

Adapted from Wikipedia: Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic. His unique body of writing — much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously — is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as The Metamorphosis (1915), and novels, including The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal and bureaucratic world.

Photos of Kafka on this site are in the public domain.

(1870 – 1944) was an American novelist who wrote popular works of sports fiction for boys, creating highly readable and idealistic stories that taught about the importance of sports, teamwork, and school spirit. Over his career, Barbour produced more than 100 novels as well as a number of short stories. He was the winner, along with George Randolph Osborne, of Life Magazine’s Shortest Story Contest, which culminated with a publication of these works in 1916.

Jack Douglas (July 17, 1908 – January 31, 1989) was an American comedy writer who wrote for radio (including Red Skelton and Bob Hope) and television (including Skelton, Hope, Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Woody Allen, Ozzie and Harriet, Jack Paar, George Gobel, and Laugh-in), and regularly appeared on television programs with Merv Griffin and Jack Paar. By 1959, his celebrity enabled him to mass-market a book called My Brother Was an Only Child, which became a best-seller. He won an Emmy in 1954 for best-written comedy material. He died of complications from pneumonia in 1989, at age 80.

Punch, or “The London Charivari,” was a British humor (sorry, ‘humour’) magazine that ran from 1841 until 2002. It still has a Web site and cartoon library.

We were not able to find information about the authors of individual stories, so many authors will have to remain anonymous. Project Gutenberg has the complete text of many Punch magazines, and you can find this issue here.

Flash Fiction Online’s Founding Editor Jake Freivald lives in New Jersey in a house teeming with life: a wife, nine kids (yes, all from said wife, no twins), two dogs, two cats, and twenty fish.
Lack of qualifications never stopped Jake from taking a job, so when he saw the need for a professional flash-only ‘zine he created Flash Fiction Online. He was astounded when a team of volunteers rallied around the project, and he would like to shut up now so you can read about them.