After sharing our “Oops” contest winners last week, we’re ready to keep Flash 405 ball rolling with news of our next contest and a very special guest judge: Chelsea Sutton!
Chelsea was the first-place winner of our February 2017 Flash 405 contest with her short story The Clinking of Coins. Since then, Chelsea was featured at our “L.A. in a Flash” event for Lit Crawl L.A. in 2019, and her work was published in our chapbook, Composition: Reach. We are delighted to have her return to Flash 405 to judge our upcoming June contest!
Submissions will open June 4; work can be submitted in any genre, but it must meet the flash requirements for that genre and address the theme of “Loop”. The first and second-place winners will receive a cash prize, and will be published in Exposition Review along with any honorable mentions.
Read on to learn more about Chelsea and this month’s contest theme!
– June 2026 Round –
The Judge: Chelsea Sutton
Chelsea Sutton is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, a Humanitas Play LA award-winner, and she co-wrote the Emmy-nominated Welcome to the Blumhouse Live, an interactive film event for Blumhouse/Amazon. She’s the author of the novella Krackle’s Last Movie from Split/Lip Press and her short work has appeared in many journals and podcasts, including It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton. She recently co-created the holiday horror advent calendar podcast, Long Winter Nights. She’s the Artistic Director of Rogue Artists Ensemble and holds an MFA in Creative Writing UC Riverside.
The Theme: Loop
From Chelsea:
“Loops of string and rope. Loops on belts and shoelaces. Loops on a DJ track, repeated notes and beats and chorus lines. Loops of thoughts, memories, ghosts, that argument in our head we can’t turn off. Loops of time, the days and months and years we repeat sometimes without ever noticing.
Write a story or a memoir or a poem or a word art that feels never-ending. Tell me about the time loop you’re stuck in or about that delicate swirl in the pattern of your grandma’s couch, or the repeated phrases that have never left your heart. Don’t be afraid of being too spooky or gruesome or magical or sentimental. In fact, break that loop you’re in and get weird with it.”
Before submitting, we encourage you to read the full guidelines; these can be found on our Submittable (link below) or on our Flash 405 contest page, where you can also see past contests and winners.
Please reach out to expositionreviewflash405@gmail.com with any questions.
Good luck!
