flash fiction

The Green Stories Project Flash Fiction Competition: Epiphanies

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The Green Stories Project is running a flash fiction competition for stories under 500 words on the theme of ‘epiphanies’. Submit your story here. The deadline is August 27th, 2025.

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The Competition

The writing competition invites writers to submit a story about transformation, when a moment of epiphany causes one or more characters to change for the greener.

The transformative realisation doesn’t have to explicitly mention climate or the environment as long as it inspire behaviours with environmental implications (e.g. food, travel, consumption, gardening, cleaning, etc.), or the story could focus on the benefits of any greener alternative (e.g. environment, health, status, spirit, soul). For more about judging, prizes and terms and conditions, visit their site Green Stories Project.

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The Green Stories Project

Their mission is to create a cultural body of work that entertains and informs about green solutions, inspires green behaviour and raises awareness of the necessary transformations towards a sustainable economy.

Green Stories began as a series of free writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like. They have run over 20 free competitions since they set up in 2018.

Green Stories engage writers, academics and policymakers in sustainability projects. They also partnered with BAFTA on the #ClimateCharacters project to research whether audiences believe presenting characters with high carbon-consumption as aspirational is still acceptable.

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Cedar trees colonize a mossy log, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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“Through the Portal” Anthology of Hopeful Dystopia Reviewed by Dragonfly.eco

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Art is the oar that guides us through dystopian rivers

Mary Woodbury, dragonfly.eco

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Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia the ecofiction anthology edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and me and published December 2024 by Exile Editions, recently received another wonderful review from Mary Woodbury at  dragonfly.eco. Here is an excerpt:

As the world teeters on disaster, what saves us ranges from graceful failure to full-fledged resistance and opposition. Through the Portal, an anthology of eco-fiction, offers 35 artful, provoking stories to propel us forward. The book serves to reconnect us with Nature in diverse storytelling, from cautionary tales to fiction that brims with hope while also helping us grieve what we’ve lost—described as solastalgia.

The anthology is a stunning collection of short stories and poetry that address our most existential concerns through metaphysical, epic, solarpunk, mythological, and contemporary perspectives. From landscape and weather transformations to stars, fairy tales, parking lots, mermaids, whales, storms, bees, and much more, the reader is treated to a journey of colorful narratives woven into a chronology: imagination, after the fall, and Earth hour.

Mary Woodbury, dragonfly.eco February 2, 2025

For the full review go to dragonfly.eco.

Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future—and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly told folk and fairy tales.—Exile Editions

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Through the Portal Anthology Gets Stellar Review

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The recently released Through the Portal ecofiction anthology that I co-edited with Lynn Hutchinson Lee and published by Exile Editions, received an in-depth review by author Lisa Timpf in The Seaboard Review. Here are some highlights of Timpf’s review of this anthology of hopeful dystopian short stories, flash fiction and poetry:

Mermaids, arborists, and pollinators are among the characters to be found in Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Edited by Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu, this eco-fiction collection gathers over thirty stories that fall under the general umbrella of hopeful dystopias…

Through the Portal offers intriguing and imaginative glimpses into the future. As [one of its short stories] “A Fence Made of Names” suggests, we often don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it. By showing us what we stand to lose, these stories offer a reason to increase our actions to preserve the planet…

While many of the tales hint at dark times ahead, it was refreshing to find so many that offered a ray of hope despite that. Whether it’s finding the will to live another day, returning to a better relationship with the land and the Earth, or taking steps to improve the world in even a small way, these stories affirm humanity’s potential for resilience in challenging times.

Will ingenuity, love, and respect for the earth help us work through whatever changes might lie ahead? Through the Portal offers hope that these qualities, if not enough in and of themselves, will help us find our way.

Lisa Timpf, The Seaboard Review, Jan 13, 2025

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Go to The Seaboard Review for the full review of Through the Portal. The review is worth reading in its entirety.

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.