"The era we’re in is an age of short stories"
Flash Europa 28 proposes to showcase European flash fiction and offer free, original, creative and quality content to the Chinese online reader. It will distribute European flash fiction written by young authors from each of the 28 member states of the European Union. Through national competitions five submissions will be selected from each state, translated into Chinese and distributed free of charge, over a period of 28 weeks to Chinese audiences via multiple social media platforms.
Very short fiction is not a new genre, it has it roots in multiple literary traditions across the world. The art of brevity in storytelling and use of words has existed for centuries, perhaps nowhere more strongly than East Asia—China's everyday chengyu 成语 and Japan's renowned haiku poems, for example. What is changing, however, is that technology is facilitating a renaissance and popularisation—even democratisation — of very short fiction.
There are eager audiences too.In the face of changing technology and the rapid pace of modern life, flash fiction is gaining new popularity. The highly mobile, multi-‐tasking and ever-‐connected reader is looking for and touched by minimal and spare reads, reads which capture the essence of life in our fast-‐paced and rapidly changing world through the digital prism. Over the course of this project, Chinese readers will be transported via their mobile devices to each of the 28 member states of the EU, one country each week, seeing the nations through the fresh, short storytelling of their cutting-edge flash fiction writers.