BLOG

FLASH EVENTS

Welcome to our first FLASH EVENT.
A key component of flash writing is that you can read a lot in one sitting! Read and enjoy them all. (scroll down)
In honor of International Women's Day 2026, we hope you will consider joining our writers who have shared their work and paid it forward by supporting nonprofits that provide writing programs for girls and women.

Learn more about the nonprofits we are supporting.

help spread the word on your social media channels. please!

“Christmas 1984”

George Orwell’s utopian epic may have missed its mark, but in 1984, AT&T released an inexpensive, magnetic tape answering machine that millions of homeowners enthusiastically snatched up by Christmas that year, often changing their personal messages daily. This may well have been society’s first plunge into the darker realms of our current social media alienation. ***** “Ho, ho ho, sorry we’re not ho-ho-home! Don’t forget to swing by First Methodist for tonight

SHORT STORY

Mim Eichmann

The Archaeology of Silence

"It is just so unfair." That is what my daughter said this weekend, looking at the man my husband has become. She’s right. The grief of missing someone sitting right in front of you is a weight that feels, at times, unbearable. But as I sit here at seventy-two, navigating a life I never signed up for, the lens suddenly shifts. I am finally seeing Nanny. For decades, she was the silent architecture of a Bronx kitchen—as unexamined as a wooden stool. I saw her stoicism as em

MEMOIR

Laura Dinoia

Please Wear Bright Colours

The car park was a sea of colour when I arrived: pink and orange, purple and red. It was obvious people had ransacked their wardrobes and pulled out the brightest thing they could find. Zinging hues. Clashing shades. A crazy kaleidoscope of stripes and patterns. Mick was right of course, Jen would have loved it. You only have to look at her paintings to know how she felt about colour. Bright and bold. Full of vitality. Like her. Mick’s email said he wanted it to be a c

SHORT STORY

Gwenda Major

Love From a Transplanted Heart

Sharing the beauty of the Grand Canyon dusted with sugary snow, he asked if I could accept him on an uncertain basis. His charm broke through the dismal clutter of cyberdating, writing that the intensity of my eyes drew him straight into my soul. We met over wine, my cheeks flushing scarlet like his beloved Sedona Mountains. A decade earlier, JN received a heart transplant by the grace of a young accident victim. Captivated by the feeling of being adored and truly seen, I de

MEMOIR

Valerie Ann Burns

Daddy

Suzy uncurled herself from her hiding place, in the footwell behind the passenger seat. It was sunrise. She smelled gasoline, heard her father chatting with the attendant about the space race. She sat up and stretched. Suzy hoped they’d gone far enough that he wouldn’t turn back. She hoped he wouldn’t be angry. Walt broke off his conversation. “Suzy?!?” “Don’t be mad.” She hugged her pillow to her chest as he took in her suitcase and Barbie carrier.

SHORT STORY

Anne Moore

First Date With A Woman

I saw her standing in front of Angelina’s, the cozy Italian restaurant, as I drove by. My heart raced. You haven’t been on a date in forty years, and that was with a boy, but you got this, Tarah . I parked what seemed like a mile away and as I walked towards the restaurant, I texted her: About to come around the corner. I’m the lesbian with the blue shirt shaking in her sandals. I might have waved to her. As I walked towards her, she began narrowing the gap, walking

MEMOIR

Tarah Cantore

I Cannot Hear You

The phone rings. I rush to answer, longing to hear my daughter’s sweet voice. When she left for college, it felt like standing on an ocean pier sending her off to the new world. My finger, sticky from eating a cinnamon bun, presses the green button on the iPhone. I hear a heavy, raspy exhalation. “This is Detective Anderson. There’s been an incident at the university. We need you to come to Arizona immediately.” The phone hits the table. My legs give out, and I collapse to

SHORT STORY

Edna Schneider

Disarming

In 1966 I was a newly minted teacher at a high school in a small Oregon logging town, my first full-time, adult job. I was 22. One morning in early October, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy came to my classroom just as the school day began, to inform me that one of my third-period students, Eddie Lundgren (not his real name), had brought a pistol to school. The deputy told me that he and another deputy were following Eddie, waiting for the right moment to pounce on him. H

MEMOIR

Dana Quinney

Giving Credit

I found a small disk in my mother’s jewelry drawer. It rested in a velvet-lined box as if it were a gem. I knew it was special. I just didn’t know why. Without my mother—or her sisters—here to ask, I tucked it aside, meaning to research it later. When I finally did, I learned it was an early credit “card” from Abraham & Strauss, the grand department store in downtown Brooklyn. Polished counters. Serious saleswomen. The faint scent of perfume and starch. The card was no lar

ESSAY

Helaine Fiedler

Gone with the Night

She was barely two years into the marriage. A toddler still at her breast. Money for soup folded into the knot of a faded akwete wrapper. According to her husband, she fled into the long night and no one had heard from her since. She had many names. To some, she was Rotimi. To friends, Timi. To me, she was Sista — stretched with affection. They did not know she stayed with me for two weeks after she left. Her knock that night was timid — almost apologetic — like the

SHORT STORY

Juliet Ikegwuonu

Never Too Late

I knew the moment I fell that I had broken something. Stuck in the corner of the room I stared at the cracks in the ceiling. By the time an ambulance arrived, I had decided it was either a map of the Nile delta or from another angle, the coast of Norway. My musings were interrupted by the arrival of both the Fire Brigade and the ambulance crew. Soon I was carried out very carefully by four strapping, young firemen who deposited me delicately, like some precious, ancient artif

MEMOIR

Sarah Das Gupta

Chocolate Cake in the Desert

Our prehistoric ancestors used infanticide as a necessary survival mechanism. The history of why we’re here today, alive in the first place, is checkered with things we’d rather not say, even though it all remains written indelibly somewhere in a back annex of our genetic coding – like a Google search history you can’t erase. Other instincts have remained in the modern brain too, like the urge to scoff the entirety of that chocolate cake in the fridge because you don’t know

SHORT STORY

Katie Goto-Švić

Judgment

“Sometimes I wonder if I would be standing alone on the Day of Judgment.” My grandmother had written these words in her diary, on a page among many. A single sentence that managed to bleed through her pen, indicating the storm in her mind. I read it years later, but couldn’t ask her why she thought that. Why did she wonder that she would be alone there when my father and aunt have always stood beside her in this world? Would they not stand by her in the afterlife? In our bel

MEMOIR

Imaan Sheikh

The Dots on the Ceiling

A woman stood outside the entrance to her cave. She gazed at the night sky. The small specks of fire fascinated her. Wondering how fire could be in the sky, she memorized their layout and position. Then, she turned around and entered her cave. At the edge of the fire, she pulled out a burnt twig and one stick aflame. She crawled through a wide tunnel until she reached a small cave with a dome shaped ceiling. With her fire stick in one hand, she marked the ceiling with bla

SHORT STORY

Deborah Shrimplin

An Unlikely Friendship

Laura and I first met in ballet class when we were eight. She was small with sturdy, little legs and a mass of thick, curly hair, the colour of dark honey. She wasn’t the most graceful dancer, but she was the most committed. From the front row, she performed jetés, pas de chat, and ronds de jambe with abandon. I hid in the back row, self-conscious of my little girl's belly protruding from my pink leotard. Near the end of class, our teacher placed a tiara glittering with

MEMOIR

Linda Thompson

ABOUT FLASH EVENTS

Flash events are a special part of the Grande Dame Literary Journal. It is a place where women writers can directly support fellow women writers.

Each event is based on supporting nonprofits that encourage women to write via mentoring, workshops, or simply putting a pen to paper.

For some of these events there will not be a charge for the submissions, and instead, we will ask our writers to pay it forward to an organization of their choosing, or one we work with. If we do collect a submission fee, the net proceeds will go to Girls Write Now and Poetic Justice, both organizations support demographics of girls and women writers who might otherwise have limited writing opportunities.

Each entry gets posted. There is no rigorous editing process, only adherence to the GDLJ guidelines.

Since 2020, GDL has supported women writers. Now we are asking our writers to support fellow women writers.

Thank you for joining us.

Click here to learn more about the organizations we work with to empower women through writing.