Heather McQuillan
writer and teacher
"Deeply absorbing, these stories creep under your skin with their pressing sense of longing."
Michelle Elvy, author of the everrumble and Assistant Editor, Best Small Fictions
Flash Fiction
A few years ago, I discovered the joy and challenge of writing short and very short stories.
My work can be found online and in anthologies from NZ, UK and USA
In 2019 my first collection of very short stories, Where Oceans Meet, was published by Reflex Press in the UK.
'Where Oceans Meet' is a collection of sixty-one flash fictions from award-winning New Zealand writer Heather McQuillan.
Though small, the stories in Where Oceans Meet are substantial, often moving, and impressive in their employment of detail. They bring to the page varied perspectives and diverse aesthetics from a realism to surrealism.
These are stories in which characters yearn for connection but sometimes find, as in the title story, that ‘when the vectors of the oceans’ wave fronts meet at an angle, sometimes they cancel each other, sometimes they compound with spectacular results’.
" Where Oceans Meet and Other Stories is a strong course in the art of exceptional flash writing. Heather McQuillan cements her place as a premier storyteller in this challenging genre, crafting pieces that stand up beautifully to subsequent readings and emotionally resonant but comforting stories of love and loss, and what we still yearn for in the deepest parts of ourselves."
Amanda McLeod
Read the Review
" The 61 flash fiction stories included in this slim volume cover all aspects of life in a thoughtful and original way using vignettes to see into the complexities of human relationships. Through them all is threaded the author’s connection with the natural world which significantly weaves its way into each narrative."
Anabel McPhee
Read NZ Highly Recommended Library List
Read the Review
"These are such heartrending pieces: beautiful, poignant and sharp by turn.
The cache of memories is open and you are there to pick them out and build, collage like, let vignette speak to vignette."
Ruth Hanover, poet, author of 'Other', Cold Hub Press.
Book Design artwork by Nod Ghosh
Highlights and Awards
and some stories/poems online and in print
Special thanks to Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction
for publishing over 30 of my stories and for supporting New Zealand writers.
Check out stories in the current issue and the archives.
2026 Highlights
Winner The XYZ Poets Poem for Children 2026
Winner Te Pae Tawhiti Awards Young Adult Fiction
Finalist Julius Vogel Awards, Young Adult Fiction
Fuego 4: World Congress of Poets Literary Journal
Shortlist Tom Fitzgibbon Award, Storylines NZ
Flash Frontier: He Mutunga| Endings
Longlist: National Flash Fiction Day (NZ) 2026
Best of Open Mic CPC Autumn Season March 2026
Milk Carton Churches selected for Best Microfictions 2026
2025 Highlights
Flash Frontier: Ngā Ika/Fish
Notable Book Award for Truth Needs No Colour
3 flash fiction in Rawhead Journal Issue 1
Winner NZ Bug of the Year Poetry Competition
Inclusion in Anthology Short/Poto Massey University Press
2024 Highlights
Flash Frontier: Circle/Porowhita
Longlist: National Flash Fiction Day (NZ) 2024
Flash Frontier: Mārire/Quiet
Flash Frontier: Toka/Rock
Flash Frontier: Out of time: myth, mystery, story FEATURE
Shortlisted in Given Words 2024
2023 Highlights
Winner of The Franklin Writers Group Flash Fiction Prize.
A story published in Pav Deconstructed
( a beautiful coffee table book full of words and art inspired by Pavlova!
Longlist: Micro Madness ( June 14: Re Entry)
Flash Frontier: Manu/ Bird
Flash Frontier: Rakau/ Tree
Guest Reader at Canterbury Poets Collective Spring Season ( I read a selection of micro pieces)
Voiceprints Anthology, CPC
2022 Highlights
Flash Frontier Winter Award Winner
Flash Frontier: Featured Writer
Longlist: National Flash Fiction Day (NZ) 2022
Longlist: Micro Madness 2022
Longlist: Reflex Fiction (UK) Spring Competition
Selected to participate in Reflex Press collaborative novella in Flash.
Flash Frontier: Thunder
Flash Frontier: Awa
Flash Frontier: Insects
2021 Highlights
Finalist in Radio New Zealand Short Story Competition.
Finalist 2021 Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition
Mismatch is published in the anthology The Art of Death
Two stories longlisted for NZ National Flash Fiction Day 2021
Longlist Reflex Fiction Autumn Competition
2020 Highlights
Flash Frontier: Matariki edition
Second Place Micro Madness 2020
Longlisted for NZ National Flash Fiction Day 2020
Notable Book Award for Avis and the Promise of Dragons
2019 Highlights
Highly Commended NZ National Flash Fiction Day 2019
Third Place Micro Madness 2019
2018 Highlights
Meniscus and Australian CAL Best Prose Prize
Bonsai: best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand
Third Place Micro Madness 2018
Long List National Flash Fiction Day 2018
takehē magazine feature writer
Blue Fifth Review: Blue Five Notebook Series
2017 Highlights
Nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize
The Raven Chronicles ( Seattle, USA) published three of my stories in Vol 25: Balancing Acts.
This was part of a Christchurch- Seattle Sister City exchange.
UK National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, 2017
Reflex Fiction Award, Spring 2017. Third Place
Cambridge Autumn Festival, Cooney Insurance Short Story Competition. 3rd place
Bath Flash Fiction, June 2017 Anthology
2016 Highlights
First Place in the NZ National Flash Fiction Day competition, 2016
First Place in NZ Micro Madness, 2016
Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition. 3rd= place
Highly Commended in the National Flash Fiction Day competition, 2016
Shortlist, William Taylor Memorial Heartland Short Story Competition
2015 Highlights
Flash Frontier Summer Writing Award 2015
Nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize
On the shortest day of 2015 my micro story was read on RNZ’s arts programme
Standing Room Only . (It’s right at the end and it’s very short at 100 words)
Longlist: National Flash Fiction Day ( NZ)