Episode 1

Less is more in a series of flash fiction by Tania Hershman, prize-winning exponent of this burgeoning literary form.

Tania Hershman, a former science journalist, is the author of The White Road and Other Stories, commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. She is Grand Prize Winner of the 2009 Binnacle 150-Word Ultra Short story Competition, and winner (Europe) of the 2008 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's 600-word Short Story Competition. Tania is currently writer-in-residence in the Science Faculty at Bristol University. She is also founder and editor of The Short Review - an online journal dedicated to reviewing short story collections - and current Fiction Editor of Southword magazine.

Opinions vary on the precise definitions or poetics of flash fiction, but put simply: a flash is a very, very short story. The Afternoon Reading usually yields three stories per week - this time, there are sixteen.

Today's six:

My Mother Was An Upright Piano
Manoeuvres
At Camden Town He Said He Loved Me
Mugs
Heavy Bones
Plaits

Read by Nicola Walker and Tom Goodman-Hill.

Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.