The Brittle Paper Flash Fiction Competition results are in!

To celebrate our debut Literary Festival, held on 29 August 2026, we had a Flash Fiction competition, and over 250 submissions came in!

The competition asked everyone to imagine a world in the year 2158. 200 years after Achebe published Things Fall Apart, what does the role of the writer look like? What does that world look like for the writer? How has the writer’s audience changed? Are there still writers, and if there are, what are their inspirations and motivations? What is the 22nd-century writer?

We had a fantastic time reading through everyone’s brilliant works. It is not easy to write a 22-word story, but trust our Brittle Paper community to excel as they always do. What was even less easy was selecting a top 10, and then having to pick first, second and third place. However, we have made our decision, and the list is finalised.

The winner of the Brittle Paper Flash Fiction Competition is Mary Ipeh Osise!

On the podium for second and third place are McLord Selasi Azalekor and Abimbola Akin. 

As promised, we are also publishing the seven writers who make up the top 10, and you can read all of the brilliant pieces below!

TOP TEN FLASH FICTION ENTRIES

Winner: Mary Ipeh Osise 

Know This

The writer is to this century what a seamstress who handstitched her clothes was to the last. Know this and know peace.

Runner-up: McLord Selasi Azalekor 

The Story

The Archive offered to summarise humanity in one reasonable paragraph. Ama declined. She spent the rest of her life writing the footnotes.

Runner-up: Abimbola Akin 

The Relics

Barefeet. Tattered dress. I hand over a month’s earnings to the dealer for the relics : pen and paper, my salvation from insanity.

Story 4: Phiwe Mhlope

Where once was life, algorithms colonised. But where paper and ink remain, autonomy lies. For, of the attention economy, resistance is freedom!

Story 5: Sandy Baffour Adu 

Year 2158: I opened the novel I had been meaning to read, and imagined I would like it since Claude did not.

Story 6: Henry Ikpo 

The vision-plagued poet, after her last poem of 2158, is documented to have buried herself in coal and wailed for all eternity.

Story 7: Blessing Obiahu 

We were first Chroniclers, then Interpreters. Now, the remnants of our humanity cling to the fading pages of time, needing us, Guardians.

Story 8: Ogieva Uyiosa Victory 

Nights are dark and dangerous on Erebus, our new home planet. “Once upon a time” I begin. The monsters stop and listen…

Story 9: 2158: NmaHassan Muhammad

The Ferry

The sun sets due east over dangerous waters, a fisherman ferrying a poet and a coffin – Rumi’s books concealed under the corpse.

Story 10: Jean Wathugu

Bounty for the Love of a Poem

A bounty on the head for a manual penner. It is the overlord’s birthday. He desires the love of a poem. 

 

 

Thank you all for being part of the Brittle Paper community and for sharing your work with us!