'Emerging authors from vast geographical regions examine the conundrum and contradiction of human experience through carefully crafted detail. The brevity of short-form writing makes it an apt vessel for capturing the haunting incompleteness of human experience. Through flash and traditional length short stories-fiction and life writing, as well as hybrid forms of storytelling-there is a compelling ebb and tow of ideas, as focalised through highly idiosyncratic voices. The authors work deftly, paying due homage to the crucial relationship between the focalising voice and sharply rendered detail-cultivating narrative features with intuitive hands and minds, fashioning abstracted realities that linger beyond the final lines of the text.' (Publication summary)