Welcome to our first regular issue of flashquake, an online journal devoted to flash literature. We're excited to share with you some excellent offerings of flash fiction, memoirs, essays, plays, and short poetry.

So what exactly is "flash literature?" It goes by many names — short-shorts, sudden, micro, minute writing, and many others. Defining what it is, however, is a much harder task. Flash can be an entire story, with a beginning, middle and end. Or it can be a sudden spark of illumination, a look into a single moment in time. It can have a plot or be plotless. It may fit into a genre or be entirely experimental. The possibilities are truly boundless. The best flash makes you think about it long after you've finished reading it, comes back to haunt you when you least expect it. Quite an achievement for something so small.

Another possibility is to define flash literature by the number of words in the piece. But then the question becomes, where to set the limit? 2000 words? 1000? 100? 55? What criteria do we use to set the limit? The best that we can say is that flash literature is short — in the age of digital media and hectic schedules, the shorter the better. But don't be fooled; just because flash writing is in vogue now doesn't mean it doesn't have a rich history. Check out some of the flash written by literary masters — O. Henry, Leo Tolstoy, Jorge Luis Borges, and Octavio Paz, to name a few. Then, draw in your computer screen, put up your feet and enjoy some of the finest flash writing we have to offer you today.

— The Editorial Collective