Bonsai Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand

Bonsai brings together a pioneering collection of flash fiction and associated forms (prose poetry and haibun) from 165 writers in Aotearoa New Zealand, along with intriguing essays on this genre. In 200 stories of no more than 300 words, where the translucent boundaries between prose and poetry are often transgressed, we discover a vast array of human experience. Here, children race snails, learn to fly, and look for Antarctica in a drain pipe, while Schrödinger’s cat dreams of life and death, a dog licks away a woman’s tears, and a peacock guards its human family. Family tensions spill over, babies are born and parents die. There are perfect moments in miniature as dew falls on a spider’s web and strangers make eye contact. Composed with precision in a form where every word counts, these carefully chiselled works are provocative, tender and endlessly surprising.

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor of flash fiction. Frankie McMillan has been called ‘our maestro of flash fiction’. James Norcliffe is a poet, editor and writer for children.